ColdIQ

I've hired 15+ A-players in the last 3 years. Here are the traits that actually matter (and most people get this wrong): 1️⃣ Self- motivation I don't have time to micromanage anyone. If I need to constantly tell you what to do, check in on your progress, or push you to get things done? That's not going to work. - I need people with internal drive - People who wake up and know exactly what they need to work on. You're an adult. You figure out when you work best - 2am or 6am, I don't care. Hard work is common. Self-motivation is rare. 2️⃣ Curiosity This is probably the most important one. The world is moving insanely fast right now. Everything AI-related, new tools, new agents - what you learn today is outdated in 6 months. If you need me to force you to learn about AI agents or new technologies? It's impossible. You can't micromanage curiosity. I need: - People who get excited about learning by themselves - People who go down rabbit holes without being told to That's how you stay ahead. 3️⃣ Resourcefulness Some people just find a way. No matter how impossible it looks. They're like water - they find a path around any obstacle. These are the people who don't make excuses. - They don't wait for perfect timings - They figure it out 4️⃣ Collaboration over intelligence Here's something I learned the hard way: Sometimes people who are extremely smart become a problem. They're gifted intellectually, but they hate working with people they consider "less smart." I'd rather have someone who's a little bit less smart but is actually nice to work with and collaborative. When you're 4 people, maybe you want 4 geniuses. But at 30 people? You need people who work well together. Super talented a**holes slow everything down. 5️⃣ They give before asking Every single A-player we have started by doing something without asking for anything in return. - They proved themselves first. - That's the trait you want. 6️⃣ Optimism Building a business is brutal. You need people who see opportunities instead of roadblocks. Their energy lifts everyone when things get rough. Pessimistic people drain the entire team. I can't have that. 7️⃣ Takes ownership I don't want to chase people down. If you take ownership of your work and actually care about doing a great job? We're going to crush it together. And I'll have way more breathing room. 8️⃣ Actually enjoys learning Not just curious - but genuinely excited to get better. - These people seek feedback - They expand their skills - They stay hungry You train them once, and they 10x that investment because they keep improving on their own. The ROI on people like this compounds like crazy. --- Hiring right is super important. But honestly? It's only 50% of the equation. The other 50% is systems, GTM strategy, processes that actually scale without you being involved in everything. Comment "SYSTEMS" and I'll send you the breakdown of how we teach this inside the Accelerator.

I asked Michel Lieben 🧠 what his top GTM tools are to run his $6M outbound agency... There are his picks across 11 categories like AI Agents, CRM, Sourcing, Signals & more.... For context, ColdIQ curated > 2,200+ AI Sales Tools across 55 categories. Soooooo Michel has used a lotttt of tools AI Agents → Relevance AI (Agent Builder) → Instantly.ai (Reply Agent) → Clay (Research Agent) → n8n (Agent Builder) → Artisan (AI SDR) CRM → Breakcold → HubSpot → Attio Data Enrichment → Prospeo.io → LeadMagic → FullEnrich → Wiza → Clay Data Scraping → Instant Data Scraper → Firecrawl → Apify → Clay Data Sourcing → Openmart → Ocean.io → LinkedIn → Exa Intent Signals → Common Room → Unify → Clay MCPs → Docker, Inc → Pipedream → Composio → Cursor → Claude Messaging → Octave → Twain Sales Assistants → Momentum.io → Attention → Claap Visitor Identification → Midbound → Vector 👻 → RB2B Workflows → Relevance AI (Agentic Workflows) → AirOps (AI SEO Workflows) → Clay (GTM Workflows) → Default (Inbound Workflows) → n8n (General Automations) Want to see the entire list of 2,000+ AI Sales Tools? Check it out here: coldiq.com/ai-sales-tools Alsooo this is my first ColdIQ carousel!!! Many more to come!! What type of information on GTM tech tools do you want to learn??

I've spoken with 70+ agency founders last month. Half didn't have a reliable acquisition system in place. The other half struggled to deliver once they scaled past 10 clients, because of a lack of structure & internal processes. Here's the step-by-step system Soheil Saeidmehr built after onboarding 200+ clients: 1/ Contract & Payment We use Qwilr for proposal signing, Stripe for automated payment processing & subscription setup, and the payment confirmation triggers the entire onboarding sequence 2/ Data & ICP Mapping Airtable becomes our command center: -Sales team fills form: → retainer details, industry, specific requests, scope of work -Client fills onboarding form: → targeting criteria, ICP mapping, relevant triggers, existing tech stack, and copy examples. All this data automatically flows into a Google Drive client folder created with ALL campaign data. 3/ Team Assignment & Client Workspace Soheil Saeidmehr assigns the right GTME + Team Lead based on bandwidth and industry expertise. A Slack channel and a Notion workspace are auto-generated with: → Campaign deadlines → Task assignments → Reporting dashboards 4/ Campaign Infrastructure Setup Team leads create the technical foundation → Clay, Instantly.ai & lemlist workspaces are created + inboxes ordered via form, pushed to Slack for our email infra team 5/ Kickoff Call & Campaign Creation → GTME + Team Lead run a comprehensive onboarding call where we review the ICP Matrix and refine it, before agreeing on copy and launching 1st campaigns. 6/ Weekly Sync & Optimization We set up a weekly sync date & time where the calls are recorded with Attention, which is AUTO synced w/ Notion for next steps and upcoming tasks PS: Rumour says we show ALL our internal processes in the Accelerator Program to help agencies SCALE

Snowflake hit $4,000,000,000 ARR with 60% of its pipeline sourced from SDRs. Here's their playbook (and how you can replicate it): First, you need to ensure your departments work together towards the same goal.   For Snowflake: Marketing, SDRs & Sales are under ONE SAME team. They made the test for specific regions. - The ones that did it had up to 46% meeting rates. - The ones that didn’t do this had 17% meeting rates. 1️⃣ Collaboration Marketing & Sales work hand in hand. Marketing gathers insights to be used by the sales team. The sales team acts on them within 2 weeks. Seems obvious, but the truth is most companies have these 2 teams work in silos. 2️⃣ Intelligence Snowflake relies a lot on signals. Their rationale is to get in front of prospects as soon as they’re searching for their use cases. They do that via: - Third-party intent signals (job changes, funding rounds, web searches) And lower down the funnel via: - First-party intent signals (product usage, email clicks, website visits). They rely on tools such as Bombora to spot accounts showing interest in the background. I’d recommend using Clay or Common Room for this. Accounts flagged as “high intent” convert 4x better than average accounts in the CRM. 3️⃣ Activation When accounts show enough buying intent, Snowflake’s teams launch their “1-2 punch” play. That is: Weeks 1 & 2: ABM team warms target accounts with personalised campaigns (ads + emails + dedicated landing pages) Week 3: SDRs step in with outbound. By the time an SDR cold calls a prospect… they’re already not cold anymore. Result = 36% meeting rates on pre-warmed accounts (vs. 10% on cold) 4️⃣ Engagement They hit prospects everywhere they are. → Calls → Cold Emails → LinkedIn DMs → Custom microsites True multichannel orchestration. (I’d recommend using a platform like lemlist to replicate these cadences) 5️⃣ Optimisation They constantly iterate on what works and what doesn’t. Engagement metrics get shared between the teams in bi-weekly alignment meetings. ABM, SDRs, & AEs are all aware of what works in terms of messaging & targeting. But they don’t try to attribute who’s responsible for the deal precisely. Instead, they measure impact at the account level and optimise the entire funnel together. The results speak for themselves: → Deal velocity multiplied by 2. → Tier-1 accounts convert 5x better. → 2-4X more meetings on ABM accounts. … and you don’t need Snowflake’s budget or 200+ SDRs to start implementing it. You can start by: - Aligning marketing & sales on shared goals. - Tracking buying signals (use Clay or Common Room) - Launch ABM campaigns 2 weeks before starting outbound. … and measure impact at the account level. And if it seems like too much at once, send a DM… we’ll help you implement this system. P.S: Kenny Damian made this fire breakdown. Follow him… he makes the best AI Agent x Sales content on LinkedIn.

Last month we've sent 1.9M cold emails for 60+ companies. Here are the 5 non-negotiable for outbound that converts: 1️⃣ The list is the strategy Sending to the right person at the right time has the biggest impact on conversions. Most emailers spend all their time figuring out what to write and basically no time building out their list. Do the opposite. Here's the thing - you need to identify people actively struggling with a problem you can solve. For example, we ran campaigns for an HR SaaS that helped with employee churn. So we looked at Glassdoor reviews and average employee tenure. If employees stayed under 18 months AND reviews were terrible? We hypothesized these companies were perfect fits. 2️⃣ Give value before you ask for anything Most cold emails try to take: "Can I pick your brain?" "Can I have 15 minutes?" "Are you free for a quick call?" You're interrupting someone's day. The best outreach gives first. Here's the framework: Think about what you'd do if they were already your client. Then do it for free. Example that generated more leads than I could handle: I targeted recruitment companies with a simple hypothesis: if they were my clients, I'd build them a list of Talent Acquisition Directors at companies actively hiring for 10+ roles. So I built the list. Sent it to them with a tutorial on how I did it. The response rate was insane as I wasn't asking for anything. I was delivering actual value they could use immediately. 3️⃣ Deliverability is king Good deliverability doesn't guarantee success. But bad deliverability guarantees failure. Most agencies think they can just blast emails and hope for the best. Then they wonder why their campaigns tank after a week. The things you need to consider: - Under 30 emails per day per mailbox (we run 20-25 max) - SPF, DKIM, DMARC setup correctly (non-negotiable) - Secondary domains (NEVER use your main domain) - No open rate tracking (it destroys deliverability) - Email warmup running constantly - Spintax to avoid spam filters And obviously, send emails you'd actually want to receive. 4️⃣ Reply to leads fast Replying fast = more meetings from your positive replies. Have someone regularly checking your master inbox and replying whenever a lead shows interest. Most people stop when they get a positive reply. That's where the real work actually begins. ↳ Note: Instantly recently released AI reply agents that draft personalized replies. You can run them on autopilot or with human oversight (which I recommend). 5️⃣ Write for 1 person, then scale Most people build the biggest list possible and write a message that appeals to everyone. But appealing to everyone = appealing to no one. When I start new campaigns, I write the first 25 messages by hand, looking at prospects' LinkedIn profiles. The beauty of manual work? You find patterns you can later scale with tech and AI.

We grew our GTM agency from 0 to > $6M ARR in the past 2 years. And we’re launching a program teaching you exactly how: That is, → the LinkedIn content strategy that generates 2M+ impressions per month → the processes that allow us to deliver outbound to 80+ B2B companies → the GTM engine that books us 100+ monthly qualified meetings → the outbound & GTM playbooks we deploy for all our clients → our internal ai, agentic & automation processes → our hiring, systems & leadership playbooks … and much more. But why learn from us? - ColdIQ is a lemlist, Smartlead & Instantly.ai expert (and one of few agencies that received their golden plaque) - ColdIQ is 1 of 4 Elite Studio Clay partner (the highest tier there is!) - ColdIQ has ran GTM & delivered results to 200+ B2B companies. - We how to generate revenue from LinkedIn. But most importantly, each of our teacher actively does what they preach. - Louis recorded our outbound & Clay modules, and is among ColdIQ's highest performing go-to-market engineer, delivering results for our largest clients. - Ivan teaches our ABM + LinkedIn ads modules, and is actively running campaigns responsible for $1M+ in closed-won revenue at > 5X ROAS. - Alex teaches our hiring & operations modules, while actively running all of ColdIQ’s internal operations. - Niklas teaches sales, while leading a team that closes $60K to $85K in new MRR every month. - Soheil teaches service delivery at scale & systems, while actively leading our agency. - And I, Michel, teach "generating revenue from LinkedIn", while posting here every single weekday (and I haven’t missed a day in 2025, that’s my biggest flex). If that sounds interesting, schedule a call with our team right here: coldiq-accelerator.com And if you have any questions, please feel free to add them below (so everyone can see the answer) 👇

I spend > $200,000/year on AI Sales tools. I’d pay double the price for these: (And recommend them to every revenue leader) Here’s the breakdown by use-case: 1️⃣ For data sourcing Data is the most essential part of getting results with cold outbound. There are several ways to find data. For example: A. AI Agents like Clay, Exa & Relevance AI can browse the web to source hard-to-find data points. B. B2B databases like LinkedIn & Ocean.io include an extensive range of filters to help you build lists. C. Niche databases like Openmart are very helpful to source data on local businesses. D. Buying intent platforms like Clay & Common Room will help you reach out to leads with context. E. Scraping software like Apify or Instant Data Scraper will help you extract data from any platform. 2️⃣ For data enrichment = emails or phone numbers We use a handful of (very) reliable platforms. For example: A. Individual solutions like Prospeo.io, Wiza & LeadMagic help us find 100,000s of email addresses every month. B. Waterfall platforms like FullEnrich & Clay aggregate the best individual solutions (including the ones cited above). 3️⃣ For cold outreach Landing in spam is the #1 reason cold email campaigns fail. We use sending platforms that prioritise deliverability. Examples include: A. Instantly.ai for email sending. B. Expandi (Outreach Playbook Talks) & Valley for LinkedIn outreach. C. lemlist for multi-channel outreach including phone, email & LinkedIn touchpoints. 4️⃣ For deal management & closing Managing your pipeline can get messy when your prospecting becomes (a bit) too efficient. A. For deal management, examples include: Breakcold, HubSpot or Attio. B. For meetings, examples include Attention & Momentum.io, which keeps track of your conversations, records them, gathers insights, and takes action on your CRM. (Salesforce for Momentum). P.S: What's the next AI Sales tool I should absolutely add to my $200K software bill?