ColdIQ

We just hired four new team members. Here is how to hire efficiently. - No endless interview loops. - No "we'll get back to you" and then ghosting. - No first-day chaos where no one knows what to do. They signed, onboarded, and started in record time. Because we built a system. A system where: - We know exactly who we need before we start looking. - We keep interviews short and focused. - We onboard hires like we onboard clients (clear expectations from day 1) We’re not in the hire-and-fire game. We’re in the build-and-scale game. That’s why we don’t treat people like disposable assets. The result? People actually enjoy working here. - They don’t waste time figuring out their role. - They don’t get frustrated by misalignment. - They start making an impact from week one. And that’s exactly why we’ve been able to scale from 2 to 20+ employees in just over a year. Hiring doesn’t have to be a nightmare. It’s only a mess if you let it be one.

ChatGPT: 1M users in 5 days. Cursor: $100M ARR in 1 year. Next? An AI sales platform: I reviewed 1,300+ AI sales tools. Here are the categories I'm watching 👇 (In no particular order) 1️⃣ AI Sales Agents Why? ↳ They perform actions as if they were your personal assistant. Some platforms to look at: - Relevance AI - Claygent - n8n 2️⃣ AI All-in-One Sales Platforms Why? ↳ They include (almost) every sales engagement feature under one hood. Examples: - lemlist - Instantly.ai - Woodpecker.co 3️⃣ AI Note-taking Apps Why? ↳ They record/transcribe sales meetings & extract relevant insights from your conversations. Examples: - Attention - Fathom - tl;dv 4️⃣ Intent Platforms Why? ↳ They identify buying signals that help you contact prospects at the right time. Examples: - Common Room - Warmly, - Unify 5️⃣ AI BDRs Why? ↳ They automate sales prospecting for you. ⚠️ Make sure to check the quality of the outputs ⚠️ Examples: - Artisan - Topo (YC W24) - 11x 6️⃣ AI Writing Tools Why? ↳ They help you write high-converting copy. Examples: - Lavender 💜🔮 www.ora.im - Octave - Twain P.S: What category of AI tools are you betting on? 👇

The best investment you can make is in yourself That's exactly what I did in August 2024 Having started Lucky's Lead Generation a month before, I wanted to improve my Cold Email skills, and was looking for a coaching program. That's when I found ColdIQ and had a call with Fivos Aresti. From the beginning it was very clear - these guys know what they're doing. So I decided to join. In the course I learned more about: - Email Infrastructure - Copywriting principles - Advanced targeting - Countless automations - 100+ GTM softwares But more importantly, I joined an incredible community! With legends like Dominique Michel, Jacob Bowman, Sönke Venjacob and 130 more! And of course, the ColdIQ Team - Dan Rosenthal, Michel Lieben 🧠, Dujam Dunato, Soheil Saeidmehr, Harry Mason and Monika Grycz 💌! Thank you for making a great course and an even better community ❤️

The 2025 Account-based Marketing Playbook I'm rebuilding the ABM motion for a unicorn SaaS. Here's exactly how: 1️⃣ Total Addressable Market Map You should have data on every company in your ICP. In this case: ↳ Their Salesforce CRM had 2500 accounts ↳ Sourced from ZoomInfo + Cognism ↳ We did a CRM download. ↳ Added industry matches scraped from the internet using DiscoLike. Meaning we had WAY more accounts. But not all were qualified. 2️⃣ Develop ICP model Few companies study their ICP like a science: ↳ Analyze closed won for signal trends. ↳ Study highest-spend customers. ↳ Find commonalities among closed-lost. ↳ Backtest model against closed won. Now, you have a model to score your TAM map. 3️⃣ Account research + company scoring The point of ABM is that you focus on the right accounts: ↳ Automate account research using Clay. ↳ Deploy research agents to scrape info from websites. ↳ Add enrichments from data providers. ↳ Feed data into AI scoring prompt. ↳ Categorize accounts into Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, and unqualified. Send data on qualified accounts back to the CRM. 4️⃣ Find relevant contacts at company Multithreading is key when it comes to ABM: ↳ Use Clay, Apollo.io, or Icypeas to find people by title. ↳ Key decision makers are Tier 1. ↳ Management end-users are Tier 2. ↳ Operational end-users and Tier 3. ↳ AI scoring prompt to categorize. Big deals require buy-in from all three tiers. 5️⃣ Track first- and third-party signals This is to prioritize accounts when timing is right. 1st party signals: ↳ Outreach replies. ↳ Data straight from your CRM. ↳ Ad insights w/ Fibbler, Vector 👻, or Influ2. ↳ Product usage w/ Amplitude, Mixpanel, or Heap. ↳ Website visits w/ Warmly, RB2B, or MeetVisitors. ↳ LinkedIn signals w/ Common Room, Teamfluence™, or Trigify.io. This makes up your engagement score: ↳ Aware (0-40), Interested (41-70), Evaluating (71-100) 2nd party signals: ↳ Review sites like G2, Capterra, or ColdIQ. ↳ Champions w/ LoneScale, UserGems 💎, or Champify. ↳ Tech integrations w/ Crossbeam, PartnerStack, or Reveal. 3rd party signals: ↳ Job openings w/ Clay, PredictLeads, or PDL. ↳ Funding w/ Crunchbase, PitchBook, or Owler. ↳ Company initiatives w/ Clay, Serper, or 10-K reports. ↳ People changes w/ Clay, LoneScale, or UserGems 💎. ↳ Tech stack w/ BuiltWith, HG Insights, or Wappalyzer. ↳ Social signals w/ PhantomBuster, Trigify, or Common Room. These make up your intent score: ↳ Low (0-40), Medium (41-70), and High (71-100) 6️⃣ Composite score and CRM enrich In Clay, this data is composited into one priority score. And sent back to the CRM. 7️⃣ Segment actions based on scores Strategy for Tier 1 acquisition: ↳ 1:1 outreach ↳ Focused ad spend ↳ Event invites + warm intros ↳ Personalized videos + landing pages For Tier 2 and 3s, you can automate: ↳ Email outreach w/ Instantly.ai ↳ Linkedin outreach w/ HeyReach ↳ Multichannel sequences w/ lemlist Comment if you'd like the full res graphic 👇

Are Gen Z weak and Lazy? We have all heard it before. By 2030, Gen Z will make up 30% of the workforce. Can you really afford not to hire them? Our company is fully remote and the average age is 27. We grew from 2 to 20 employees in under 12 months. In my new YouTube video, I break down how we manage our young global team: - How we pay well and build the right incentives—no matter the role. - Why we don’t force a 9-to-5 or a single location. - The dinner rule - Why we are not a family Curious about the full Playbook? I share 7 key points that help us keep Gen Z engaged (without handing out free therapy or ping-pong tables at the office). So you will know how to turn Gen Z into your company’s strength, not a management headache. Comment “Z” below to get the link to the video.

Here’s how I’d find my first 10 B2B clients if I had to start from 0: (It’s what I’ve done to hit $3.6M+ ARR) 1. Find a cheap way to get my brand / name out there. In the beginning, you have more time than money. Thus, start with an acquisition channel that takes time but costs little. It could be: A. LinkedIn Publications B. YouTube Videos C. Blog Articles I started with A. If you sell to HR, Marketing, Sales professionals or B2B Founders... I suggest you do the same. ↳ Tools you can use: Kleo / Taplio (ideation) + Canva (design) 2. Direct this traffic to an optimized website or LinkedIn profile Make it clear who you sell to and how you can help. If people visit your website, I'd recommend filming a 5-minute video sales letter (VSL) that showcases how you can help. (This does wonders for improving conversions!) Whether people visit your website or LinkedIn profile, you can: - create a lead magnet to grab their email address - identify + qualify people who showed interest ↳ Tools you can use: Instantly.ai / Vector 👻 (cheap / free visitor identification) 3. Enrich leads & reach out to qualified prospects Reach out to every prospect that seems to be a good target... but hasn't messaged you yet. I'd send the first 50 messages manually before looking to automate anything. Since they saw your profile / website + they're a good fit, you can write a message that combines personalization based on their {action} and their specific {situation}. Something short, such as: "Hey {{first_name}}, seems my latest post on {topic} resonated. It probably came at the right time since you're currently doing {initiative}? Either way, happy to exchange ideas if you'd like. Cheers" The magic when you send these notes manually is that you constantly improve/rework your message - and you end up uncovering patterns. You can later use these to scale/automate your outreach. ↳ Tools you can use: - Prospeo.io / Icypeas / LeadMagic / FullEnrich (to find emails) - Instantly.ai / Woodpecker.co / Smartlead (to send emails) - HeyReach (to send LinkedIn notes) - lemlist (for LinkedIn + Emails) 4. Repeat Steps 1-3 for long enough until you inevitably improve. Who's launching something new in 2025? 🙋 Let me know what it is ↓

The #1 reason your cold email campaigns don't get responses: You're stuck in the spam folder. No one sees them. Here are 7 ways to avoid that: 1️⃣ Build your email infrastructure with secondary mailboxes/domains: Instantly.ai done-for-you offering helps with that. ColdIQ also has a premium offering if you wish to outsource your deliverability setup. You can also set it up on your own by buying new domains & setting up a mix of Google + Outlook mailboxes. 2️⃣ Warm up your domain and limit your daily sends Platforms like lemlist, Instantly, Woodpecker.co, Smartlead & MailReach have warm-up features that help improve your domain reputation. If you don't like the idea of 'artificial email warm-up' — try not doing it, but make sure you send a low volume of emails and increase it slowly/progressively. 3️⃣ Clean your lead lists before sending Emails that bounce are a huge tell that you’re reaching out cold. Jesse Ouellette explained it well: “Imagine you send an email to a person you know… how likely it is that you get their email address wrong?” Pretty low, right? Well that’s how Google/Outlook know what you're doing. → Takeaway: Use reputable tools to find + validate emails (e.g: LeadMagic, FullEnrich, Prospeo.io, Icypeas) 4️⃣ Optimise your email copy That means: - Very few spam words (Instantly.ai, Folderly & Mailmeteor have a free tool to remove these) - Spintax variation (Instantly can automate this for you) - Plain text writing without HTML - As few links as possible - No open rate tracking 5️⃣ Match your email service providers with the ones your prospects use Send to Google Mailboxes using a Google Mailbox Send to Outlook mailboxes using an Outlook mailbox. Instantly.ai & Smartlead can take care of it for you. 6️⃣ (Last but not least) Ask yourself… would I want to receive this email? These 'optimisations' won’t matter if your emails aren't worth reading. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects: You’re sending an unsolicited email to someone who feels they receive too many. Most outreach doesn't care about the recipient. If you provide value, you can break all the rules… and you’ll get responses anyway. Follow me Michel Lieben to learn how I use tech to grow my $3.6m ARR outbound agency. P.S: Any tips to add here?

This small shift in our finances helped us scale past $50K/month. We stopped focusing on revenue. And started tracking the right numbers: 1. Gross profit. Because revenue is a vanity metric if your costs are eating all your margins. We focused on delivering our services in the most efficient way possible. 2. Net profit. More revenue without margins is working harder for the same outcome. We got obsessive about efficiency: Cutting unnecessary software costs Negotiating better deals And streamlining operations To increase what we actually add to the bank every month. 3. Churn rate. It’s easy to celebrate new sales. But if customers are leaving just as fast, you're running on a treadmill. We optimized retention before acquisition. 4. LTV. Scaling without understanding customer lifetime value is a dangerous game. Once we figured out exactly how much a client was worth over time, we knew how much we could afford to acquire them. 5. LTV to Acquisition Cost Ratio. The simplest way to tell if your business is scalable. If you're paying more to acquire customers than they’re worth over time, you're in trouble. We optimized this ratio to make sure every dollar spent on growth actually paid off. You usually want to have a ratio of 3:1 of LTV/CAC. These five numbers moved us from "How much did we make this month?" to "How much will this business be worth in three years?" Most founders don’t track these. Don’t make that mistake. Track the right numbers. Make better decisions. Your growth depends on it. What’s the one metric you obsess over in your business? 👇 PS: Fuelfinance has been the best partner to help with our finances.

We’re designing a new logo for ColdIQ. And I need you to help me pick which one we should go with: 1, 2 or 3?

We booked 1,000+ meetings from LinkedIn last year. Yet, I am changing my content strategy. Why? Because my role has changed. I’m still passionate about GTM and sales tech… But I now spend my days leading a team, scaling a company, and figuring out how to keep 20+ people motivated and excited about the work they do. So I’m taking that bigger perspective to YouTube. Expect less “outbound tips” and more on: - The raw behind-the-scenes of running a remote business. - Stories of real transformation—like how Fivos went from SDR to Head of Sales in under a year. - Tactics on managing a fast-growing company (without losing your mind). My 2025 Goal: Be everywhere. Not just LinkedIn. We want ColdIQ to become a true content powerhouse—across LinkedIn, YouTube, and beyond. If you’re curious to see how a remote founder navigates the craziness of scaling, or you just want a dose of inspiration to take your own leap. I hope you know where to go by now. What are the topics you would want me to cover more?