Field Notes #02 — Cold Email Isn’t Dying. Your Copy Is.

For everybody else that's joining on LinkedIn, thank you for joining. I think we have like 90 or 100 people to come see Georgie's pretty face today, as well as Bill's maybe. If you know of me, I'm Spencer. I'm the founder of Growth Alliance. So we do a lot of revenue operations and orchestration things, to say the least, but we've also dabbled in cold email. But today's topic is cold email is not dying. You pretty much just suck about it. Uh, joining us is Georgie. I'll let you guys introduce yourselves and Bill, who I actually look up to in the industry. So guys, Georgie, if you want to kick us off and we can just run with it.

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks a lot for the invite. Also super cool to share the stage with Bill. It's super funny because we all 3 been talking to one another, like cracking about how all these like cold outbound in particular won't work if there isn't relevance. So super hyped to chat about this. In essence, what we do is that we capture role signals, we verify them, and we put them in a complete company profile so you can understand the bigger picture behind each account. Therefore, your message becomes more relevant. I'll keep it short as it is.

Yeah, and I'm the CEO of SalesCaptain. For the past like 5 years now, we've been building go-to-market for companies, and that obviously includes cold email, LinkedIn outreach, Clay, and everything around that, which is, you know, solving go-to-market for companies is an interesting, high-quality exercise that we really enjoy doing. So yeah, that's pretty much what I've been doing for the past like, yeah, 5 years now with SalesCaptain, and then about like 10, 11 years in the industry overall.

That's crazy. So you've been in the cold email and demand gen game a lot longer than, I don't know, maybe Georgiana as well. How have you, I mean, not to be like super formal, but like, how have you seen the whole industry evolve, at least over the last 5 years and maybe over the last year? Because I feel like this is a very good angle that you could go after here.

Can I add to that very quickly? Okay, awesome. Yeah, well, I think Bill is right with the fact that the foundation didn't change. Maybe how you managed to stand out a bit changed in a way of how you leverage the data in order to become more creative. But at the end of the day, If you're, no matter, by the way, if you're doing signal-based prospecting or if you're integrating signals inside your mass campaigns, shout out to Spence, by the way, I'm sure that you can share your 2 cents in here, but I feel like at the end of the day, it needs to be answering to that question of why me, why now? And initially, what is, what are you going to do about a situation that I'm in, in order to address my pain? Because I feel like we've been giving a lot of pickaxes to people, but we skipped the part where businesses are initially made for, which is how the hell do you solve my problem? So I feel like within genuinely, whether you're posting a content piece or whether you're doing an outbound, like everything GTM related should address that question and speak to only one person, which will skyrocket your growth. Because speaking from my own experience, if you have more ICPs, you have more churn, you have a more diluted message across all of your channels. So there you go.

I think it's really interesting though, because recently I've actually turned my outbound back on. And today somebody called me a scammer actually, which was really funny. And it was, it was my fault. Bill, Bill was my canary test and he can attest to this, this statement. I recently started to do some, a little bit of network activation on my network and I didn't set up my block list properly, truth be told. Right. And I was like, okay, it doesn't see us because we're actually recording. So it, it only looks at my calendar events. It's like, okay, yeah, we'll go for it. The whole, the whole thing runs on the back of a system, and that system still has to be designed by people. How I look at it is I go up to businesses just like the two of you guys do, and I say, okay, who are you guys trying to serve? But how do you guys actually make money and how do you guys do it efficiently? Can we, can we shave off 1% anywhere or can we add 1% anywhere? I think the name of the game now though doesn't really come down to What does the business need right now? It's what does the business need in 6 months to be able to keep up? And I think that's the hard part. And I think, I mean, we can, we can talk about offer placement and offer deliverability, but I think there's a lot of people that are playing make pretend right now in our industry. And that's kind of like the problem with LinkedIn. I trust you guys in our industry to be able to tell me like, yeah, no, you're being stupid, bro. Like, you know, like you guys put out good content. I know you guys know your shit. But the data, everybody has access to the same data. We were talking about this a little while ago, I think privately. Everybody with a wallet can buy Apollo data. Anybody with a wallet can buy Zoom data, but not everybody is going to actually know what to do with it. And not everybody is going to know how to layer that information. Or Bill, when you put together the strategy with the offer, you inherently know maybe that's going to work. Or Georgie, when I'm using your data, it's Okay, yeah, the offer might be okay, or the offer might be great, but how do we hit them at the right time? I think that, that's realistically where I want to take the conversation of like, how do we actually know what the difference is between a signal and intent? If everybody has access to the same data, what is the differentiation point? What actually makes you good at your job?

Certainly, it's also like, how do you structure it as part of your signal-based engine as a whole, right? Because many of us know about sending that first message, but how do you later down the line use this unique piece of information to do follow-ups? I feel like that's an underrated part of it. Just to get a little bit back, it's funny to say, by the way, that everyone has access to the same data because everyone also has access to code and we know that the game has levels, right? So it's like, where do you go with it? What, what do you do with it? Everyone can throw money at the problem, but how? You know, how, who is going to solve that initial problem? So like, that's something just to think about. And because of the fact that we're using so many terms like intent and signals, maybe it's nice for us to determine them a bit. At least for me, like intent is somewhere where there is a piece of information where a lead or a prospect, well, you can wonder on the qualification, but whatever, like an account is engaging with your own content or website or product, whatever. For me, that's intent. And then of course goes into sales, product marketing, whatever. And signals is exactly what Bill mentioned in the head. Like those guys just got a new certification. That means the probability of me knocking on the door with a pitch that is relevant about that certification massively increases my probability of having a good call in general, or at least them saying like, hey, this is nice, but we can look into it later down the line. That being said, guys, for you, like what's the difference between intent and signals? I mean, am I only the, the only crazy person in the room to take a into it? Like, what are some mental models in there?

I would fill the room. I could talk about this for an hour, so I'll just try to keep this as short as possible. The main question that I ask myself when I start to think about signals and intent are, what type of information tells me somebody is doing something versus something is happening? So how I qualify it and how I mention it to people is a signal is a piece of information. Intent is an action that somebody or something is happening on top of that information. So we have to qualify if somebody is actively shopping for something on eBay, for instance, right? In the e-com world, you're gonna Google something. You're gonna type into Google, I want a, a giant beer glass that was in Germany, whatever. Is that intent? Yes, that is search intent because somebody is taking an active action to be able to go and do some whatever. In the B2B world, if somebody visits your website, is that intent? Yes or no? Hmm. Hard to decipher. The signal is that they're on your website. Did they click or did they scroll far enough for something to be qualified? Yes, they scrolled 75% down the page, or yes, they clicked on the discovery call link. That's intent. They've, they've proceeded to do or complete an action. So how I think about that is Have you taken an action that is qualifiable and quantifiable to me in a buying motion? That's intent. Or just, you intend to do something with a verb, with an action. A signal, it's inherently going to be a noun. It's a thing. So a piece of information, whether or not in the K-10 report some new investor comes in, or that somebody comes in from Signalbase saying, hey, we just got funded, or hey, This funding event just happened. To me, that's a signal. I collect those signals and I layer them on top of each other. I say signal 1 is that you just went and took M&A investment. Signal 2 is that you're on my website. Based on that, I can calculate that you are probably intending to build a growth engine, but that's an assumption. So we have to be very careful when, when I go to my other teams and my clients and I say, this is what intent is, this is what you should be measuring. Because you shouldn't be measuring signals. You should be measuring results and conversions if that's relevant to you and your marketing and your sales pipeline. But that would be my opinion on how to delineate between a signal and intent because one's a noun, one's a verb. But I'm open to criticism here.

Yeah, I feel like everyone that watches this should go away from this session and be like, holy cow, should I now do this or this according to my GTM motion?

Yeah. So I would like to preface that frontloading and backloading are my inherent internal mind terms.

Exactly.

So Georgie, and if you guys don't know, Georgie and I are really good friends at this point in time and, and we've met each other through the industry. So frontloading and backloading is something that I've talked to Georgie a lot about. And a lot of cold email works inherently with backloading, which is You want them to come to a call. You want them to get on a value call with you. You want to do a demo and you want to give them what's at the end of that demo because you want to measure their intent to purchase from you. That's called backloading. So in, in my head, how it works is people don't want to be sold to. They want their problems to be solved. You are a solution to their problems and they want what's at the end of that demo call. They want the information from you as a consultant for free at the end of that 1-hour consultation, right? So do I want to have somebody come to a discovery call with me for my consultancy when I could just give them a resource, right? And I think like that's a very, very interesting position for us to be in is, let me just get Bill back in here and, but when he gets back in here, but anyways, front loading and back loading, go-to-market, cold email, cold calling, and ABM, they're all parts of different marketing and sales functions, how I would describe my internal monologue is people want what's at the end of the discovery call. They want what's at the end of that demo because that will help them make an informed decision if they are intending to make a purchase or so in the B2B world. Let's just, for lack of a better say, backloading is what a lot of cold email marketing agencies do. And Bill, I would honestly love for you to hop in here at the end of my speech here. Backloading is when we try to get teams and marketers and salespeople meetings. MQLs. What the fuck is an MQL? You need to define that, right? An MQL, maybe to some people, is somebody showing enough intent to come to a meeting with a salesperson because they're interested. Is that definition of an MQL going to be the same across every organization? Absolutely not. Maybe it's an SQL, maybe, maybe it's not. Maybe it's a sales accepted lead. The front-loading technique is more or less what ABM campaigns more focus on. They throw value at people. They put up billboards in front of Google HQ. They go talk to the VP of growth. They take them out to dinner. They try to go top down. This is inherently— we can look into ABM, but front loading and back loading inherently to me is you throw value at them. You do all of your research. You spend a lot of your time really personalizing and making the message as relevant as possible, which is Really done so much easier nowadays with our best friend Claude or Clay, you know, and from there you write a very relevant, perfectly made email instead of templating, instead of doing all of this. It's a one-to-one email. I know everybody goes on a one-to-many, one-to-one, whatever. But if I come to you, Georgie, and I say, I know that you're going to go and want to serve recruitment agencies. I know that I want to go to those recruitment agencies and help them do their job better. So I'm gonna go out of my way and do all of the research possible and say, hey, recruitment agency number 1, these people in your solar technology niche have just taken on P&E funding. Here are the 3 people that you can go and talk to today. I would love to show you how you can do this by yourself using our technology. Can I make you a free account and then show you how to use it in a value call next week? I think that campaign Perfectly sells itself. You frontload value, you give them value upfront. A backloaded value email would be more or less, get on a call with me. We're gonna give you value after you show intent. We're gonna, we're going to hold the value with us to qualify you and then give it back to you. So it's, it's, you're measuring different things, I think, at that point in time. And, and it's different in the enterprise sales motion versus like the traditional B2B motion or the PLG motion. It's completely different on the product and the offer. Which again comes back to Bill, what you said way at the beginning of the conversation, how good is your offer? And how well is it perceived by the target audience that you're going after? So to completely nerd out, I think it works very, very well if you've just got a buttload of money that you're going to spend on converting ABM-level accounts, you have the ability to do frontloading. All of your executive, uh, your, your BAs, or even, you know, the higher-up BDRs, senior BDRs, senior SDRs, are not going to have 200 accounts that they're gonna go after every month. They're gonna have 20 because they have to spend so much time doing the research to be able to go after them, craft them, craft the events around them, craft the mails, the cakes that they deliver, the floor mats. I don't know, there's just some company that they delivered floor mats and it was like for SOC 2 security. I thought that was a beautiful campaign. But anyways, this is the difference in how I like create the campaigns and around like how I create the copy depending on the offer. Depending on the sales motion, depending on the audience. It's like, it's not formulaic, but that's how I would think of it in a mental model, in a system view. But Bill, now you're back. You can comment on it.

Go ahead, Spencer.

I've got a really, I've got a really hot question.

Shoot.

Does bulk at-scale email still work in 2026? And do you think it will continue to work?

That's a question for me. Jokes aside, like, I do think it works according to your motion, but again, you need to be able to As you mentioned, like give something to the users, right? And maybe sometimes this is something that, you know, as part of at least the value addition that we do right now with our own outreach is, hey, if there is this guy that it's from Stripe and he has accounts, right, that he wanna go after, give him the accounts that he already wanna go after and be like, by the way, if you wanna like see how I source them at scale and you can do it yourself, like jump on a call. Like I feel like that's a good way to go around it. So in short, yes, I think it works. It's more what Bill mentioned, the ability to— and those are like nice because it does provide you with the ability to test multiple ICPs, which I feel like nowadays it's funny enough, more urgent than many would realize because the whole topic of product market fit shifted significantly. What vendors or companies used to have as product market fit at some point just stops working because of the— AI layers that are being pushed on the market like continuously. So you see teams having more and more this perception of should I buy or should I build myself? So that kind of changes your perception on product market fit and is the reason why you need to keep on, you know, trying new things, testing hypotheses. At least that's something that I've been seeing a lot by talking to other CEOs in the space who also said, hey, like We had amazing months, but we also had terrible months over the summer. And it's because of the fact that how fast everything is changing. So we need to, you know, shuffle a bit of things and experiment more. So the LinkedIn hype is there, but there is also the other part where it's more brutally honest and nobody will share that. So.

What are some things that you've heard behind closed doors then that you're willing to share? Because there's a lot of LinkedIn shit that goes on. And I think we all see it.

Well, I first wanna give it to Bill to ask the question, 'cause I need a minute to kind of like filter my mind. What am I allowed to say and what am I not allowed to say? So Bill, on the question of bulk outreach, man. Yeah. All right. By the way, to that degree, like, do you guys do more LinkedIn outbound nowadays or you do email? Because I feel like At least myself, like the whole mental model why I'm more invested in LinkedIn is because of the fact that people can see my profile. They can see how like the content that I that I do all these live sessions and all this. So it's kind of like becomes this thing of hey, the guy from LinkedIn. And funny enough, by doing this, I actually met a few people in Amsterdam on an event. They're like, are you the Signal Base guy? The guy with the orange logo, right? Like you can't see the face and everything else. I feel like it's a, it's a debate that has already won to a particular degree, but I do wanna see like, especially you, man, you run in the same manner, LinkedIn and email. Is there like, what are some thoughts there? Do you think, yeah, just walk me through the mental model.

So the, the model, and I don't wanna shoot myself in the foot here, But it completely depends on your audience and it depends on your selling message. I hate the answer. It depends, right? I don't think that cold email is dying. I just think that a lot of people don't know how to package their product and they don't know how to package their services correctly. And unfortunately, the biggest place for a B2B marketplace right now is on LinkedIn. And so with that, we have acquired a content agency and gained a CMO in the past few months because I have realized this. So when you come and you ask, hey, like, what is the better channel of cold email versus LinkedIn? I wouldn't say there's a better channel. I would just say that they are different channels and they're used for different things. For instance, I've built my brand off of the fact that we want high-quality referrals. I would want to have those referrals come from a B2B marketplace Or from people that I know. So unfortunately, I have to carve out time to make great content. I have to make time to do sales. I have to make time to do strategy and lead fractionally on some of my clients. It's a lot of work in the service industry to be able to do this. How I get around this is I just post consistently on LinkedIn and I comment consistently on LinkedIn, and I've met both of you gorgeous gentlemen on LinkedIn. So we can go as far as to say that you can build a whole brand off of one platform, which is LinkedIn, and just going up to people and saying, yo, nice hair, or something like, I saw that you were maybe exploring cold email, like, let me know if I can ever help you. Or you could just say, yeah, that HubSpot implementation sucked, or that Clay feature should have come out 3 months ago. People will bitch about anything. And I think like that is fundamentally very, very good at You know, being able to build a personal business. You know, I swear, whatever. But that's my personality. You guys are some of my friends in industry, and it's like that's how I approached you. You can keep doing this on LinkedIn using outbound. Whether or not that's in an automated manner, that's a completely different story. But I think with email, it becomes a one one directional track as a sales motion. You don't cold email somebody just. To, you know, to market to them. You're gonna nurture somebody that's, you know, with newsletters and everything. But if you're cold calling somebody, if you're cold emailing somebody, it's unsolicited. And whether or not we wanna argue about that or not, they may or may not have any idea who you are. On LinkedIn, at least they can see your pretty face. You know, you, they can go in and Google you. And that was the best advice that I ever had is like, you need to to become Googleable. LinkedIn is your business-to-business platform to become Googleable. People look you up on LinkedIn. People look all of us up on LinkedIn. If you don't have a presence on LinkedIn nowadays, you're really behind. You have no social credit to be able to back up your LinkedIn campaigns. You have CEO titles for people that are fake accounts out in, you know, whoever's spinning up these fake accounts. I think that's a terrible idea, but the premise of using LinkedIn versus email is that LinkedIn, you can exchange value a lot faster because you're already kind of on the platform to exchange value about business relations. You're already in the place where your B2B audience will be. On cold email, that's a very personal thing. You, you will only ever answer your family, your friends, or what's it called? Your work. Your work email, you should safeguard. Every time, single time. So when somebody that is not your family or your friends or your work try to impede on a space that they're not welcome or have been invited to, you throw up your boundaries. It's the same thing with cold calls. You don't cold call somebody at 7 o'clock at night, same way that you wouldn't cold email somebody and then try to pitch them. There's a reason why people don't respond. It's because they're not, you're not welcome there most of the time. I welcome the cold emails, but they have to be relevant.

So it's a question here, Spence, but then why whenever someone— yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

Funny enough though, but the thing is, it also depends on who you're selling, which goes back to the point of Spence. Bill, you're so freaking busy. I mean, you also don't manage your own LinkedIn account, right? At this point of time.

I mean, I, I'm chronically online. Let's just say that. But like with like creating graphics and like, like doing all the marketing, no, like I've had to delegate that out. Like anybody smart should, you know, like, but yeah.

But that's why, that's why I wanted to say like for BizzyExecs, that's why you need to diversify the channel from where you send it or even go in person. Like what I know from Frank, shout out by the way, is that when you get someone on a phone via WhatsApp. Or whenever you get their phone number, it's 80% higher conversion rate, right? So you already get that because you're in a channel where they probably won't have as much spam. Then imagine having someone on X because X is not really a channel for outreach per se anymore, I think. I do know that some people run it, but imagine how cool it would be if you can just source the piece of information that this thing can become relevant and just go to the channel where It works for that person best. Previously, I didn't know that you could have found people on Reddit because it was less like harder to spot them. And then you just reach out on LinkedIn and they're like, holy cow, like, how did you manage to find out? But I think this whole mental model is still there. It's a question of which channel do you go to and in what manner are you trying to hit that person up? Maybe you want to, uh, like ring the phone or something, but it's the point I'm trying to make is that what is going to help you to stand out.

And to piggyback on that, I think your copy can be amazing. You could be giving away a Ferrari. It doesn't matter if the first line, the preview text doesn't open the email. Like it doesn't, like I would, for instance, like I'm American, but I live in Europe. I never used WhatsApp before I, before I came here. And now when I give my WhatsApp number out to People on LinkedIn and I just say, here's my WhatsApp number. I am so convinced I can help you. I invite you to a coffee in Prague. I booked a meeting. And because that is so personal, and it, granted, the guy was a CMO in Prague and it worked. We went for a kebab, but like, you know, this, it's, it's the level of, I guess, authenticity. Like I wasn't pitching anything. I was just like, hey, I invite you. I wanna learn what you're doing. Like XYZ. Whatever. Like there was, there was no, there was no background research that needed to be in that first email. So I think it is super cultural. And I think like building on WeChat or building on top of that, I think that's where the industry is going. I think like we're going to see smarter technical folks be able to outpace the more creative folks. That's my fear though, is that more of the technical people are going to be doing it and you see Go ahead, Bill.

To that point, by the way, in standing out, I recently jumped on a podcast from one DTME and Spencer, you spoke to him, Mario.

Mario, yeah.

And he asked me something super good, actually. Maybe if he's watching this, I do want to pick up your brains, guys, on that one. But do you feel like the role of having social proof is as valuable as before when it comes to knocking on the door or doing follow-ups or in general, like For, you know, outbound as a whole, does familiarity and social proof play a role or it's more like a given? Like, oh yeah, you have this cool checkmark.

Let's continue. No. And I would, I would be very careful with those 2 words because familiarity and social proof are not the same thing. Familiarity is, is like, who do you know that knows that person? It's like, it's your circles overlapping and social proof is, it's a coordinated marketing effort. It's case studies. It's, hey, me going to my client and say, hey, I want to make a case study, put it on my website. Can you approve this quote? They're going to be like, yeah, sure, whatever, you know? But I do think that social proof helps, but familiarity with somebody that you've done it before with helps even better. So what I do, I just, I got rid of my whole My whole pitch deck, I got rid of the whole thing. I have one pager, and at the bottom of the one pagers, I have all the people that you can email. Ask for an intro. Ask for an intro if you see yourself in their shoes. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. In every single industry. And those people are not on my website. Those people are like very hardcore marketing NDA. I can't talk about them. But like, yeah, you need that. You need to go talk to somebody I've helped in your situation. Let me hook you up. They've already given me the signature. And I think that closes deals faster. I don't think you need social proof. I mean, I guess referral is technically social proof because it's marketing material, but that comes back maybe to the brand image rather than kind of like your technical capabilities.

I love that. I love that voice. Yeah, true, true. Same with seniority, by the way. If CEO reaches out to CEO, it's 10 times better than SDR reaching out to the CEO.

That's what we do. I mean, transparently, like we do persona matching. So based on the persona that we are sending on behalf of, or that we met, if we are managing the email inboxes, then we will send CEO to CEO, VP to VP, marketing to marketing. And I think that it, it's familiarity, like you were, like you were talking about. It's not this like thing being, yeah. Good.

Is there anything else that we haven't covered? I feel like We touched upon everything. Maybe follow-up techniques as the last bits. Like, what works for me right now is sending memes with my face on it. It's super ugly, super ugly, super annoying. People are cracking up and it's like, oh, this guy, really? Like, it does show a little bit of skin in the game. So that's one thing that resonates very well. And number 2 as follow-ups is embedding external pieces of information. So if some of their clients or competitors or something like this was shared to me, then I kind of embed it into that thing and be like, by the way, like, I heard about this. Is it true? And does that move the needle? It is a very cheeky move, but it's something that, you know, initially works so far.

I've got one for you. I've just started sending the Homer Simpson meme and In GIF format on LinkedIn. Be like, yo, into the—

Oh, word.

Into the— yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a great meme. I'll, I'll send it to you later.

Okay.

But yeah, it, it's been nice. I mean, I recently figured out that I can screencap on my phone. I know I'm so old. And I can green screen my face onto my screen recording. And I've been sending, I've been sending screen recording videos to people on LinkedIn when they, when, when I know that their email sequence is done, I get a notification and I just send them something on LinkedIn. I'm like, Yo, sent you 2 emails. Just, I don't know if you saw them, but hey, like, I, I assume that you're having these, and I'm like looking at their profile and I'm like scrolling and everything. It, it's very one-to-one, dude. They answer like within 24 hours. It, it's great. But I think if you're just on the email channel, it's just a matter of providing more value. I did do something and I don't know if it still holds true and the research still supports this. Bill, you, I would like to know if this is in your book, but. I, I measured all of the response rates between sending like 1 to 4 to 6 email, cold emails to people back in like May. And I noticed that if you don't hit them in the first email, your response rate drops by 42%. You go from like 64%, let's just say 64% response rate probable during overall campaigns. Down to 12 or like 14 or something like that. And the next drop, if you send a third email, it's 2. So there's literally no point for me to send a third email. It means that I've missed the mark. So I stopped sending a third email. I started putting more people into other sequences. Like I prioritized, you click the button, like prioritize new email sends. But—

When, when enough is enough, because I feel like a lot of people know that they need to follow up. Obviously the lead was super warm and all of a sudden just Stops being there and you're like, okay, maybe they're busy. Maybe they're on vacation. Maybe this, maybe that's a ghost town. And we know the 2 situations coming across. Sometimes you send 19 messages like myself to this one lead and in the end they're like, Giorgio, okay, yeah, now it's the right time. And the other side of it is like, holy cow, you're a freaking spammer. Go eat, you know, some ice cream and breathe some air and walk on some grass and stuff. So when enough is enough.

Depends. Do you have, are they already already engaging in conversation or not?

They were, they were, but they stopped.

It ain't no until they say no.

Okay.

That would be my opinion. Yeah. And on that, I, I, I just to round out that thought and I, I do think it's like ICP timing, offer, and badgering, like with, with the cooldown periods of email campaigns with like ICP verified personas and prospects. I probably wouldn't feel comfortable nowadays sending more than 2 emails per 60-day period if they've just not, if they're just absolutely cold. I think that's like the bot, that's like too much for me. I think like over 90 days, okay, maybe they're, maybe they're in a different situation. Maybe they're not even working there anymore. A lot can happen in 2 to 3 months. Maybe their situation has changed, but to what Bill is saying. 60 days is a long time for you to try again and, and also for somebody to just completely forget about you as well. So you've basically just gotten another chance with a different angle. Maybe. Yeah. If the answer is, does it matter today versus in one month? Who cares?

Solid, solid answer. Yeah. Awesome. I think that will help a lot of people. At least it helps me.

So.

Good stuff. Super cool, guys.

I know that we only have like 4 or 5 minutes left. We're going to go a little bit over, but What is the one recent thing on LinkedIn that you guys have seen that you will absolutely refute?

I have so many. Can I shoot 2? Okay. Number one, if you only place your signal-based go-to-market strategy on engagement signals, it's kind of like shooting in the dark still, because you don't really understand the full process around it. And sometimes on the lead generation magnets, like get this cloud cold playbook. People just test it for if there's someone that is going to send it or it's a homie of another person. So it's like a dead end. And please like do not generalize. If you are doing this, do not generalize into, I saw you exploring B2B growth strategies. I've been in marketing for like a decade at this point. When, like what exactly? So it's like, you know, define that. That's the first part. And then the second part is that people claiming evergreen signals are being dead and using them as silver bullets instead of financial contextual pieces that lead to budget availability. So that's the 2 things for me. 100%. You know, even as a builder in the space, like, I feel like we made it, we, the CEOs and the founders of these companies, like, way more complicated than it needs to. And it's because of the fact that A year ago, everyone was just trying to solve the core problem. So at some point it became super valuable to sell the pickaxes to the miners. But now we're getting, it feels like, a bit back to, hey, just give me the outcome, man. So I do agree with everything that you're saying. Like, we made the space too overcrowded and we made the space like full of fluff and hype that doesn't resonate. Today's the ITU, how to run Golem, and we give too many Pickaxes.

Thanks for coming to the webinar. I would, I would say, uh, yeah, I, I, my hot take though, for anybody that actually cares, is the only people that say something is the best or the only way are probably being paid to do so.

Boom.

Yeah, exactly. So just be careful of, you know, I, I have a really big problem with like, ain't gonna name people, but with certain tools or certain people promoting certain tools when I know for a fact like that tool is not getting us the proper data or the proper information and just trying to say this is the best, this is the best. Why, bro? You're so full of shit. Come on. Like, you know, I think you're— we all know, like, we in the service industry know that we've all been approached by specific people or specific tools Or solutions. I partner very publicly with the people that I trust and the tools that I use, right? I think that buyers need to be buyer, like buyer beware of the people that say it's only one way. This is the only way to do cold email. This is the best way to do cold email. This is so full of shit. And like both of you are saying, that's my hot take, just saying we have complicated the problem so much so to convince you that you can't do it by yourself. This should tell you everything that you need to know as a buyer in this industry or in every industry. It's like, if somebody's not willing to help you, then, and they only really care about money, then do you really want to just be working with that type of person? I mean, granted, it's a value trade. You're trading knowledge for money, but you know, at the end of the day, like, do they have your best interests at heart?

Yeah. Or are they just pushing because they're getting more affiliate commissions from a different software platform?

Yep. Yep. I have no problem with UGC, but, but say it. Be honest, bro. Come on. It's like, you know, so yeah.

Just to conclude, in order to know how to move away from the hype, just ask yourself, does this thing really move the needle for me today? What's the ultimate core problem that I'm trying to solve? That's it.

Well, thanks for coming. Now I can say a proper goodbye to Bill. That he's lagged out a few times, but Bill, thank you for coming. Georgie, of course. Pleasure to see your pretty face as always.

Likewise.

Awesome session, guys. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, guys.

Cheers.