Identifying High-Value Leads

LinkedIn 6-Month Framework that's generated $2,418,759+ Revenue Month 1: Initial cold layer - Don't expect to convert Initial cold layer is usually the first build and is kind of boring/straightforward. The goal of these initial ads is to get on the radar of your prospects and usually hit on one of the following: A. Main pain points solved B. Core offering/service C. Main results of working with you Month 2 - Initial 90-day retargeting - I'd recommend first focusing on a retargeting campaign that builds trust and credibility. Things such as: -Case studies -Testimonials -Client success stories -Expert how-to posts/videos -Press releases/news -Notable partnerships/logos I'd also look at introducing text ads in month 2. Super high impression and low cost, but a great way to keep your brand name and logo in front of prospects. Month 3 - 90 day OR 30 day retargeting layer - Lead Gen Form (but not what most are thinking) By that, I mean that it should be for things like: -Newsletter signup -Actual valuable resource download -Webinar signups -Valuable swipe files My rule of thumb here..don't run lead gen forms to collect emails with assets that someone wouldn't pay for. And then the second rule is that you don't pass those leads to sales team..they should be given the assets promised and a short series of educational emails that plug them into organic communities and nurture them. I'd also add in spotlight ads in month 3 as well for an extra touch. Month 4 - Deep dive into demographic data from the first 90 days and launch a new cold campaign that is niched down to your top-performing industry/company size with custom creative to match. The idea here is that we learn from our data and double down on where we are getting the most traction. We pull data out into a 3rd party reporting platform and can see what industry, geography, and company sizes we are having better CPC, CPL, and conversion rates with. Let's also throw a follower ad into the retargeting layer here. Month 5 - I'd add in a 30-day, high-intent, strong CTA campaign that pushes for the demo/meeting. We will be targeting those who interacted with our retargeting layer of ads. Month 6 - I'd build out the niche retargeting campaign and ensure my 180-day nurture campaigns are in place (follower, spotlight, and text). For the niche retargeting, it would look like this. We found that we are getting the highest conversion rates in the marketing industry so we built that specific cold campaign out to target them. Now we are creating a retargeting campaign that has rules like this. Target 90-day website visits, company page visits, + single ad interactions AND industry = marketing/advertising Then have seperate copy/creatives that speak directly to that industry. It's not a perfect framework/build-out but gives you an idea of the build over time and how to have a beautiful master framework like this eventually. #linkedinads #marketing #entrepreneurship

my competitor and i launched identical linkedin campaigns. same budget, same audience, same product category. i crushed him 8:1 on deal conversion. he was confident going into the test. better product. stronger brand recognition. more funding. bigger team. we both targeted VPs of sales at 500+ person companies. same demographic criteria. same ad creative quality. $10K budget each. month one results: me: 47 deals closed. him: 6 deals closed. he was convinced i got lucky with better prospects. "let me see your targeting strategy," he asked. i pulled up my dashboard. "i don't target demographics at all." "what do you mean? you're running linkedin ads." "i target behaviors." i showed him my approach: instead of job titles, i track content consumption. instead of company size, i monitor website journeys. instead of industry filters, i watch engagement patterns. "i built an audience of people who've consumed competitor content in the last 30 days. downloaded sales automation guides. attended webinars about pipeline management. visited pricing pages of tools like ours." my "audience" wasn't demographic. it was behavioral. "linkedin lets you upload custom audiences," i explained. "i upload lists of people who've shown buying behavior. then i target those lists with ads." he was targeting people who might need our product. i was targeting people actively shopping for our product. "how do you identify buying behavior?" he asked. "third-party intent data. website pixel tracking. content engagement scoring. competitor analysis tools." i showed him my process: week 1: identify companies researching sales tools. week 2: find individuals at those companies consuming content. week 3: build custom audiences from behavioral data. week 4: launch ads to pre-qualified prospects. "demographics tell you who someone is," i said. "behavior tells you what they're doing." he was advertising to VPs of sales. i was advertising to VPs of sales currently shopping for solutions. same title, completely different mindset. my prospects were already in buying mode. his were just scrolling linkedin. the conversion difference made perfect sense. he rebuilt his entire approach: behavioral targeting instead of demographic filtering. intent data instead of job title assumptions. shopping behavior instead of profile characteristics. next month's results for him: 52 deals closed. 9x improvement over his original campaign. the lesson was clear: demographics describe who people are. behavior reveals what people need. target the behavior.

The most-important, overlooked metric in your CRM: → The ratio of Seller:Buyer activities. Too many sales leaders will look at a long list of activities inside an opportunity and think, “Wow, they’re all over this one. Nice job!” And totally overlook how lopsided the activity is. Those 10 emails and calls to a Stage 3+ deal… …got a single email reply with a few words in it. That’s it. Which is a 10:1 ratio. Pretty scary. Compared to a 2:1, or even 1:1 activity ratio for deal in the same stage? I’m putting my money (and reputation) on the more even, 2:1 ratio. A couple other signals to look for inside the activity history: 1/ Spacing between activities. Are replies & follow-up’s happening same day? Same week? Even longer to get something back? Tighter spacing between activities = stronger. 2/ Who’s initiating the activity. Is it always the seller? Is the buyer starting new threads? Proactive outreach from the buying team = better. 3/ High vs. low-value activities. Two deals could have the same activity ratio. But one may have more "below the line" activities. Above the line activity = stronger. 4/ Activities not in the CRM. A lot of high-value activity shows up in texts / Whatsapp. So if it's a late-stage deal, do we have texts from champions too? If not, I start to press into the details more.

Account-based GTM is having a big resurgence. It used to be reserved for the highest value accounts ($100k+ deals) -- frankly it was too manual & too expensive to scale beyond that. As account data becomes a commodity -- and as AI tools help automate deep account research -- we can bring our entire target market into our CRM & tailor all our pipeline efforts on the best-fit accounts. Here's the thing: pivoting to ABM is still brutal. There are no real playbooks. And there's a painful lack of tactical resources. Emilia Korczynska, VP of marketing at Userpilot, had to learn the hard way ("ABM or die trying..."). Today she shared the tactical guide she wished someone gave her *before* she started. Read it in Growth Unhinged: https://lnkd.in/eHY8Ss5t Spoiler: it worked. Emilia's team generated >$650k in pipe in 90 days with $12 in pipe per $ spent. And now they're doubling down. Here's the TL;DR - your ABM checklist: 1. Define your ABM goals & leading metrics. 2. Pick a level of personalization (1:1, 1:few, 1:many). 3. Set up campaigns: account stages, account scoring. 4. Decide on a duration: how long campaigns will last. 5. Select channels to reach your target audience (Emilia started with LinkedIn). 6. Build your list of targets: accounts, personas, etc. 7. Prepare the content, messaging, ad formats, etc. (Make sure to define a hand-off point with BDRs). 8. Approve the budget & resources. 9. Set up dashboards to track campaign performance. 10. Onboard tools/vendors for each element of ABM. As a side note, Emilia chose an 'unbundled' ABM tech stack with 8 tools, costing ~$2.5k per month. The choices: - For list building: HubSpot (CRM), Clay, BuiltWith, Apollo.io - For campaign assets: Notion - For intent recognition & account scoring: ZenABM/Fibbler - For ad campaign mgmt, lead flows, reporting, sales outreach: HubSpot (Marketing) - For prospecting: Salesloft Hope this guide makes ABM a little less of a nightmare 🙏 #abm #marketing #gtm #saas

Most people post on LinkedIn for Lead Gen. Few people comment. But here’s the kicker: commenting can generate more leads than posting. Our commenting strategy generated more qualified leads in 60 days than 3 months of posting ever did. Here's the exact system I built to automate 90% of the process: The Problem with Traditional LinkedIn: Everyone's obsessed with follower counts and viral posts. But the reality is that 90% of LinkedIn users don't have a large following. So, generating leads from posts is incredibly hard. Meanwhile, thoughtful comments on high-engagement posts? They get seen by thousands who are already interested in your topic. I’ve been testing a strategy that blends: → Social listening → Automation & agents → A commenting playbook Here’s what I found 👇 First, I built Boolean queries in Trigify to find people posting about keywords like: “social listening” AND ("B2B" OR “lead gen” OR “GTM” OR “rev ops”) That gave me a live feed of topical posts across multiple social media platforms.. Then I automated the workflow: → Send the posts into n8n → Enrich profiles via API (filter: >15k followers for reach) → Run AI to decide if I can add real value → Draft a comment idea for me (not a copy-paste) → Send it to Slack for review + edit Result? → 2–5 high-value comment opportunities per day → Posts ranked for value-add potential, not noise → AI-powered but human delivered engagement I don’t let AI comment for me (it’s too obvious). Instead, I let it suggest angles and I refine. This way I’m: 1. Driving reach through smart commenting 2. Building authority in real conversations 3. Turning social signals into actual lead gen Posting matters. But commenting strategically—on the right posts, at the right time—might just be the most underrated growth channel in 2025. Most people get it wrong: They spray generic comments everywhere hoping something sticks. Would you rather spend time crafting another post… Or jump into the right conversation where your buyers already are?

My Favorite Analyses: the Recency-Frequency matrix. This simple yet powerful framework goes beyond traditional segmentation to provide actionable insights into customer behavior. By focusing on how recently and how often customers engage with your brand, you can tailor your strategies to maximize lifetime value. Why it works: - Recency: Customers who have purchased recently are more likely to purchase again. It's a strong indicator of engagement and future behavior. - Frequency: Customers who purchase more often demonstrate loyalty and satisfaction, leading to a higher customer value. Recency and Frequency are the most important indicators of customer value, exhibiting more correlation to CLV than Monetary Value which is the third component in traditional RFM analyses. The Recency-Frequency matrix helps you categorize your customers into segments based on behaviors instead of factors like demographics or psychographics that imply actions. The analysis reveals distinct customer segments that require unique marketing strategies, including your Champions, the customers who Need Attention, and those who have Already Churned. Implementing the Matrix: Depending on the size of your customer dataset, the Recency-Frequency matrix can be built in a spreadsheet or a more hefty tool like SQL or R. - Excel/Google Sheets: Use `MAXIFS`, `COUNT`, `PERCENTRANK`, and a pivot table to build the Recency-Frequency matrix, but watch out for row limits. - SQL: Leverage functions like `DATEDIFF` and `COUNT` to calculate metrics, and segment with `NTILE`. - R: The `RFM` package handles large datasets with ease, offering advanced segmentation and visualization. This approach isn’t just theory — it’s a data-backed method for ensuring your marketing dollars are spent where they’ll make the most impact. DM me if you'd like to learn more, including the marketing strategies that I most commonly recommend for each Recency-Frequency matrix customer segment. Art+Science Analytics Institute | University of Notre Dame | University of Notre Dame - Mendoza College of Business | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | University of Chicago | D'Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University | ELVTR | Grow with Google - Data Analytics #Analytics #DataStorytelling #MyFavoriteAnalyses #ROI #MROI

In October 2021, we generated 250 sales leads in 2 hours without coding, AI, or sales expertise, and we have never looked back. Here's exactly how we’ve used webinars to generate $3M+ in pipeline since launching our company. A week after launching Chezie's ERG platform in August 2021, we hosted a simple webinar that changed everything. The idea came when we noticed most ERG content online was outdated (think black-and-white websites from 2014; it was dark out there). We saw an opportunity. Here’s our process: 1. Find your topic     Look for LinkedIn conversations in your niche. Use tools like Perplexity to research what people are actively searching for.     2. Get the right host     We reached out to my friend Morgan Matthews (she/her), who was working as a DEI Manager at Peloton at the time. Your host should either have a strong following, work at a notable company, or ideally both.      The more notable your speaker, the easier it is to drive signups.      3. Structure your event     We titled ours "From Intent to Impact: How to Get the Most Out of Your ERGs." Morgan gave a 45-minute presentation and left 15 mins for Q&A.      Keep it simple – a fireside chat format lets your host prepare answers in advance.     4. Capture leads strategically     Have attendees share key info during registration (company size, current solutions, etc.). This helps you qualify leads before the event.     5. Execute and follow up       Some tips for a smooth event:       • Host on Zoom (everyone’s familiar with it by now)   • Pay attention to which participants are most engaged   • Share recordings after via email to warm the inbox   • Focus follow-up on qualified leads      Fast-forward to today: We've hosted 60+ events and turned webinars into our #1 go-to-market channel, even as we've expanded to other strategies. If you have questions about the process, qualifying leads, or anything else around webinars as a GTM motion, comment below; I’m happy to help! 👇🏾

If 2024 taught us anything about Cold Email, it’s this: 👇 General ICP Outreach isn’t enough to drive results anymore. With deliverability getting tougher every day, there’s only one way to make outbound work: → Intent-Based Targeting Here’s how we do it at SalesCaptain to book 3x more demos ⬇️ Step 1️⃣ Identify High-Intent Triggers The goal? Find prospects showing buying signals. ✅ Website visits – Someone browsing pricing or case studies? (We use tools like RB2B, Leadfeeder, and Maximise.ai). ✅ Competitor research – Tools like Trigify.io reveal when prospects engage with competitor content. ✅ Event attendance – Webinar attendees or industry event participants often explore new solutions. (DM me for a Clay template on this) ✅ Job changes – Platforms like UserGems 💎 notify us when decision-makers start new roles (a prime buying window). ⚡️ Pro Tip: Categorize triggers: → High intent: Pricing page visits → Medium intent: Engaging with case studies This helps prioritize outreach for faster conversions. Step 2️⃣ Layer Intent Data with an ICP Filter Intent data alone isn't enough, you need to ensure the right audience fit. Tools like Clay and Clearbit help us: ✅ Confirm ICP fit using firmographics ✅ Identify the right decision-makers ✅ Validate work emails ✅ Enrich data for personalized messaging ⚡️ Key Insight: Not everyone showing intent fits your ICP. Filter carefully to avoid wasted resources. Step 3️⃣ Hyper-Personalized Outreach Golden Rule: Intent without context is meaningless. Here’s our outreach formula: 👀 Observation: Reference the trigger (e.g., webinar attended, pricing page visit) 📈 Insight: Address a potential pain point tied to that trigger 💡 Solution: Share how you’ve helped similar companies solve this pain 📞 CTA: Suggest an exploratory call or share a free resource ⚡️ Pro Tip: Use tools like Twain to personalize at scale without landing in spam folders. 📊 The Results? Since focusing on intent-based outreach, we’ve seen: ✅ 3x Higher Demo Booking Rates 📈 ✅ 40% Reduction in CPL (focusing on quality over quantity) ✅ Larger Deals in the Pipeline with higher-quality prospects It’s 2025. Let’s build smarter, more profitable campaigns. 💡 Do you use intent signals in your outreach? Drop me a comment below! 👇

If I was running ABM at a fast-growing security company (like Wiz, Snyk, or Netskope), here's how I'd avoid wasting money on bad-fit accounts. 👇 AI Segmentation. Most companies segment by industry. They say something like: "We target Tech, Retail, and Hospitality companies with 1,000+ employees." Motel 6 and Airbnb show why this breaks. Same firmographic profiles. But very different business situations, needs, and priorities when it comes to information security (or any tech purchase). You wouldn't sell to them the same way. AI Segmentation helps you uncover and target the highest value segments for your business, beyond basic industries. Here's how I would do this for a security company: 1.) Segment on business situation (not industry). -- Analyze your best customers (high NRR, high ACV). -- Group by specific situations that align to your value prop. e.g. Security Maturity Level, Security Use Cases, Compliance Sensitivity, etc.  -- Find the *natural* clusters based on value, not generic industry labels. 2.) Identify segments with AI. -- Use Keyplay AI to categorize every account in your market. -- Backtest segments against historical data to find which segments have the highest NDR, ACV, and Win Rates. -- Find new ICPs, outside generic vertical groups. 3.) Action the data -- Create ABM plays at intersections with highest win rates. -- Develop content specific to each segment combination (e.g., "Cloud Security for Advanced DevSecOps Teams in Retail") -- Refine your segmentation models as you grow. This process can reduce non-ICP Spend (waste) by 20-30% and help you find thousands of net new target accounts. Don't just throw your budget at industries. Find the segments where your solution resonates most, where you win often, win fast, and win big. That's strategic segmentation. p.s. If you want me and my team to kick-start this process for you, we're offering a free strategic segmentation analysis to CMOs at SaaS security companies with >$20M ARR. Get your report here --> https://lnkd.in/gMezS4Zk #ABM #ICP

Yesterday, I watched a rep waste 6 weeks chasing a $15K deal while a $400K opportunity went cold in the same territory. Here's what happened. New rep gets 47 accounts. No system. No framework. Just "go sell something." He did what 90% of reps do … chased whoever responded first. Big mistake. After 15+ years building territories, here's the exact 4 step system that turns any territory into a revenue machine: #1 Foundation security Visit all Tier 1 accounts ($1M+ potential) within 30 days. These represent 80% of your quota. Assess relationship health, competitive threats, and expansion opportunities first. #2 Intelligence gathering During every discovery call collect: current usage, integration challenges, team growth plans, budget cycles, decision maker org chart. Pro tip: Always connect with the IT/Operations team. They influence 60% of buying decisions and know where the real pain points are. (Just don’t get stuck here) #3 Opportunity matrix Look for accounts doing $150K with you but $1M+ with competitors/in-house. High service volume = high sales potential. (adjust these numbers accordingly based on your ARR) #4 Land and expand Never try to replace everything at once. Week 1-2: Identify competitor/in-house gaps. Week 3-4: Lead with complementary solutions. Week 5+: Prove value with wins. Week 7+: Expand footprint. Priority scoring formula: 60% time on High Value + High Probability (existing customers with large expansion opps) 30% time on High Value + Lower Probability (large accounts with competitor/in-house entrenchment) 10% time on everything else This system helped teams increase territory performance 40%+ in 90 days. Check out the carousel for more details how this works. — Sales leaders! Want to run better QBRs?! Check this out: https://lnkd.in/gW9ApfMZ