New clients, found by name — before they start looking
Right now your clients come from referrals and whoever happens to find you. This is the third source: companies that need what you sell, each one read before it is written to, reached by name, in their own language: by email from your own domain and, where it fits, on LinkedIn and other channels, always in your company's name.
There is a fourth source, and it is the only one you can switch on deliberately.
Four ways to get new clients. One of them leaves something behind.
Every row below is a question you would ask a vendor anyway. Here they are answered side by side.
- Who gets a message
- Whoever they get through this week
- What the message says
- Their script, adjusted as they learn
- Time to the first real reply
- Three months of ramp, paid throughout
- What you are promised
- Activity targets
- What you sign up for
- A salary and a notice period
- What is left if you stop
- Nothing. The person left
- Who gets a message
- A list from a data vendor, everyone in the sector
- What the message says
- One template, a name merged in
- Time to the first real reply
- A month or two of setup first
- What you are promised
- Guaranteed meetings
- What you sign up for
- A 3–13-month contract
- What is left if you stop
- Nothing. The list was theirs
- Who gets a message
- Whoever is already searching
- What the message says
- The same banner for everyone
- Time to the first real reply
- Immediately, but only against active demand
- What you are promised
- Clicks and impressions
- What you sign up for
- A monthly budget
- What is left if you stop
- Nothing. Traffic ends with the budget
- Who gets a message
- Each company read before the letter: its site shows it needs what you sell
- What the message says
- What that company sells and how it differs from its neighbours
- Time to the first real reply
- Letters go out in week one; replies build across the four
- What you are promised
- A weekly report: companies, letters, replies
- What you sign up for
- Four weeks, stop before any week
- What is left if you stop
- The list of companies, the stop-list, the letters and messages, the accounts, the funnel stage by stage
Why being first matters
By the time a company starts searching for a vendor, the shortlist is already written — mostly from names the buyer knew before the search began, and research on B2B buying keeps finding that the vendor who made contact first wins most of the time. Advertising cannot get you onto that list; it only appears after the search starts. This can, because the letter reaches the company before it starts searching, and it is about that company's business.
6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report
Every letter is about that company's business
Nothing goes out as a template. The letter starts from what that company does and what sets it apart from its neighbours, checked on its own site. Read one for any of these markets, or ask for the one written for yours.
Subject: Steel for your made-to-order [crane girders]
[Plant] builds [crane girders] to order next to its standard range, and I haven't seen that from the other machine builders I looked at.
Orders like that are what we keep stock for: the grade is on hand the day your order lands.
We fix the price for the whole run, not per shipment, and the mill certificates travel with the first delivery.
Worth a price on your next order?
- 01What sets them apart, from their own site
- 02Why we write, in one sentence
- 03One specific offer
- 04One question, answered by email
What the first line is built from
Where the companies come from
Every first line is traceable to a page you could open yourself, most often the company's own site: what it sells, how it describes itself, where it is listed. The line comparing it with its neighbours is checked against three to five competitor sites. An event, when there is one, makes the letter sharper, but a letter never depends on one. All of it is public: nothing is bought from a list broker, and nothing comes from a scraped inbox.
Two formats. Pick by who is going to work the replies.
The work is the same up to the handover. The only question is whether you have someone free to take the conversation from there.
You have someone to work the replies
Leads
Selection, contact finding, emails and, where it fits, LinkedIn, correspondence, qualification. Not a list of contacts: you get a client who confirmed a need and is ready to talk terms. Your manager picks up a conversation that is already running.
You do not, and one more inbound only gets in the way
Leads + deal
All of the above plus the deal: pinning the specification, requesting terms from your suppliers, assembling the quote, and running the correspondence to an agreed price and lead time. Your account manager receives a finished order.
Nine stages, every company goes through them in order
Both formats include the correspondence with everyone who replies, and a weekly report on what went out, what came back and what I am changing because of it. Nothing is skipped in either — the second simply does not stop at the handover. Full stage-by-stage breakdown on request.
Two and a half to five times above the market
One measure, set against the market average: the share of companies written to that took the next commercial step, a price or terms. Below it, two letters that show how it is done.
Companies that reached a commercial step
Two and a half to five times more companies reach a price or terms than the market gets positive replies. And a commercial step sits deeper than a positive reply, so the comparison is a conservative one.
Own campaign: 103 of 4,498 companies written to, cut of 3 October 2026. Metals supplier: 55 of 4,531. Market, email to meeting: 0.5–1.5% of emails sent, LeadHaste, Cold email conversion rate benchmarks 2026. Market, positive reply: about 0.48% of recipients (3.43% average reply rate, Instantly, × 14.1% of replies that are genuinely positive, Sales.co, 2026). Market figures come mostly from sequences combining email, LinkedIn and calls; the pilots were email only. For the pilots the step is the company's next commercial move, for the market a meeting or a positive reply.
Two letters, exactly as they were sent
Hello team at [company],
[Company] builds a cable lug production line alongside its gypsum board profile lines, and I haven't seen that from the other Turkish roll forming makers I looked at.
Your dealers page lists Romania and Ukraine, but not Kazakhstan.
I find distributors and trade buyers abroad for manufacturers. I write to each company separately, after looking at what it sells, and bring you those who reply that they want your products.
In Kazakhstan I would look for buyers of your cornerbead and gypsumboard lines among plants that roll ceiling and wall profiles, drywall system producers and metal building product makers.
If someone else looks after export sales, could you point me to them?
What in it is theirs: a line the other makers in their market do not build, and a country missing from their own dealers page.
Hello team at [company],
[Company] puts no cap on how many inboxes a team can add, and I didn't see that on the other response-time tool sites I read.
I'm an outside sales rep who works week by week on contract. I choose the companies, write each one its own letter, handle the replies, and hand over those ready to buy.
For [company] I would look among property management, legal and accounting firms, and inside sales and order desks that answer clients through shared mailboxes like support@.
Would it help to see which companies I would start with, before anything is agreed?
What in it is theirs: the one product detail their competitors' sites do not offer, and the firms that live in shared inboxes.
First letters from my own campaign, company name hidden. Letters for you are built the same way, in your name, from your domain.
Where you come in
Not at the first email, and not at the tenth. You come in when a company has agreed on the substance and wants to talk terms. Everything before that point is mine.
The kind of company that answers
Metals trading, B2B, from a cold start:Want the rest of it — the funnel stage by stage, deliverability, cost per client, and which segments returned what? I send the full breakdown in writing on request, before you commit to anything.
Nine rules that protect your name
Writing to the wrong person or dropping into spam damages your brand, not mine. So the rules are fixed before the first send.
Your own clients never get a cold email
You set the exclusion list. Anything on it drops out of every send, permanently.
Unsubscribe is absolute
It blocks the company's whole domain, not one address. No exceptions.
One company, one email
Deduplicated across the whole database, so no one is contacted twice from two segments.
Competitors and middlemen are filtered out
They come out of the list before anything is sent, not after someone points it out.
Every address is verified before it is written to
An unverified address is a bounce, and bounces are what damage a domain.
Volume ramps in steps
Each step only after bounces are checked. Above the threshold, sending pauses on its own.
Every letter is written once
No two companies receive the same text. That is the work, and it is also what keeps the domain clean.
LinkedIn goes through a person on your team
A profile set up for the sales role in your company, not a company page: the same way the email comes from your own domain.
Positioning stays yours
Prices, terms and service wording are taken from you as they are. Nothing about your offer is invented.
Why none of this is a target
Sending pauses itself before bounces can reach the domain. That is the whole point of the ramp — it is not a number to hit, it is a brake. The rest works the same way: each company is read before it is written to, the emails go to companies at business addresses, and an unsubscribe blocks a whole domain rather than one mailbox. None of it is checked after the fact. All of it is wired in before the first send.
Who this works for, and who it does not
The selection is narrow on purpose. Below is the honest version of both lists — if the right column describes you, say so and I will tell you straight.
- You sell to businesses
- The purchase is considered, not impulsive
- The buyer is an identifiable legal entity
- The deal justifies a month of correspondence
- Your buyers can be found by name: catalogues, exhibitor lists, registries
- You sell to consumers, or the decision is made by a person rather than a company
- The average deal is small enough that a month of correspondence costs more than it returns
- You need signed business this week. Letters go out in week one, but a considered purchase does not turn around that fast
- You want everyone who clicked. The selection is narrow by design and stays narrow
- Buying this needs vendor onboarding, a security questionnaire or a tender. You would be buying work from one contractor, and that process is not built for it
- A decision-maker's answer takes weeks to approve on your side. The company moves on before you reply
If you are not sure which column you are in, that is a two-message conversation, not a project. Write and I will tell you if it does not fit.
Four weeks, paid a week at a time, and you can stop before any week
Not a retainer that quietly renews. Each week is paid in advance, and before each one you decide whether to continue, so what you have at risk at any moment is one week of work.
How the four weeks are paid
Each week is paid before it starts, so there is a decision in front of every one of them. Stop before any week and the work stops there.
What you hold at week four
What you see, and when
Letters start going out
Not a month of preparation with nothing to show for it. The first letters leave inside the first week, from your own domain.
A report
Companies found, letters and messages sent, who replied, who was handed over, and what I am changing because of it. Part of the service, not something you have to ask for.
The whole funnel
Your conversion at every step, the cost of a new client from this channel, and which segments returned what.
And if it does not work?
Then you have a documented answer for why not — which segment, which reason, which offer failed to earn a reply — plus the list, the letters and the stop-list, all of which keep working for whatever you do next. That is a cheaper way to find out than a year of guessing.
The seven things people ask before they say yes
Questions that come up before a pilot. Answered here so you can decide on the substance.
01Cold email does not work any more. Everyone gets two hundred of these.
Everyone gets two hundred templates. What is described on this page is one email per company, built on what that company sells and how it differs from its neighbours, sent from your domain under your signature. Nobody replies to a campaign. People do reply to someone who clearly looked. And email is not the only way in: where it fits, I write to the same companies on LinkedIn and other channels.
02We tried an agency once. It burned a quarter and delivered nothing.
Usually because the list came from a data vendor, it was shared across their whole client roster, and the copy was a template with your name dropped into it. Here each company is read before it gets a letter, and the list is built for you alone. If we part ways, the list, the stop-list and the letters stay with you.
03Our product is too complex to sell over email.
The email does not sell it. Its job is to get an answer from the person who owns the budget. What follows is an ordinary conversation, in whichever format suits the two of you.
04Why not just hire an SDR?
Then you are paying three months of ramp with the salary running throughout, you are managing them yourself, and when they leave, their read on the market leaves with them. This is four weeks at a fixed fee, stoppable before any week, and the list and the letters stay on your side either way.
05What if the pilot brings no clients at all?
Then you keep the list, the letters, the stop-list and a number for every step of the funnel — enough to see exactly where it broke: the segment, the reason, or the offer. That is an answer too, and it costs less than a year of finding out slowly.
06How much is it?
One fixed price for the pilot, the same for every client: four weeks, each paid in advance, with a decision before every week. The figure comes with the plan for your market. What happens after the four weeks is settled at the end of them, on your own numbers.
07Is this you, or a team?
Me. The selection, the copy and the correspondence are mine personally, and whoever wrote to a company is the one who answers it. While I work for you, I don't take on a competitor in your segment.
How the money works
One fixed price for the pilot, paid a week at a time, with a decision before every week.
One fixed price
Four weeks, each paid in advance. Setup, research, the letters, LinkedIn and other channels where they fit, the correspondence and the weekly report are all inside it.
You decide before each week
Before each week you decide whether to pay for it. If you do not, the work stops there. At any moment what you have at risk is one week, not the whole pilot.
Settled at week four
By then you hold your own numbers for every step and you know what a client from this channel costs you. Terms for continuing are a conversation held on those numbers, not before them.
What stays with you
The list of companies, the stop-list, every letter and message, the accounts the work ran through, and the funnel stage by stage — yours from day one.
How you pay
A service agreement as an independent contractor. You pay the way you already pay contractors: an invoice through a payment platform your accounting accepts, with paperwork included.
Full contract terms — attribution, exit — on request before we start.
Three moves to the first email
You can start in writing today.
Where I would start
Two or three directions from your site and the first companies I would write to, with the terms.
Setup
Your mailbox, who not to write to, and a few questions about your best client.
We start
The first letters go out inside week one — not after a month of preparation. Your own numbers arrive in the report every week.
Paul Burg
Cold outbound for B2B · RU, EN, ESI find clients for B2B companies by writing to them, by email and on LinkedIn, in Russian, English and Spanish. Every company is read by me before it gets a letter, and every reply is answered by me. My own projects since 2011, three years in Shenzhen inspecting factories for sellers shipping to Amazon, then managing a portfolio of those sellers, so I know physical goods from the factory end.
Tell me who your best client is
Two minutes. I answer personally.
What happens after you send
- 01I read it and answer in writing.
- 02If it does not fit, I say so in that first reply, and tell you what would.
- 03If it does, you get where I would start, the first companies, and the terms.
The person who answers is the one who will write to your buyers.