S7E2 – Why 80% of Outbound Sales Fails, and how to Fix It with Besnik Vrellaku

Why 80% of Outbound Sales Fails, and how to Fix It? Outbound sales is one of the most powerful yet misunderstood channels for SaaS growth. Despite the growing popularity of automation tools and AI-driven messaging, most outbound efforts still fall flat. In this episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast, Joran Hofman interviews Besnik Vrellaku, founder of SalesFlow.io, to dissect exactly why outbound often underperforms and more importantly, how founders can fix it. Whether you’re a SaaS startup trying to land your first 50 customers or a scaling team looking to build a repeatable outbound engine, this conversation delivers practical, no-nonsense insights you can use immediately. Besnik shares what’s broken in most outbound strategies, the mindset shift founders must adopt, the real economics behind outbound success, and how tools like AI and intent data are changing the game in 2025. If you’ve ever asked yourself “Does outbound still work?” this episode gives you the honest, data-backed answer.

Why Most Outbound Campaigns Still Fail
According to Besnik, outbound fails not because it’s outdated, but because the execution is flawed. Most outreach messages are too generic, too broad, and too focused on features rather than relevance. Buyers today are flooded with templated cold emails and LinkedIn DMs that all sound the same. They can tell within seconds whether a message is mass-sent or meaningfully targeted. The root problem is often a lack of true understanding of the target audience what their challenges are, what tools they use, and what timing matters. Without rich data and a reason to reach out that resonates, most outbound becomes noise.

Does Outbound Still Matter in 2025?
Absolutely. Outbound sales is still one of the fastest ways to generate revenue and create pipeline, especially for B2B SaaS companies. The continued growth of platforms like SalesFlow.io, Lemlist, Apollo, and Outreach shows that companies are not only investing in outbound they’re getting ROI from it. When done right, outbound puts you in control of your growth. It doesn’t rely on SEO rankings, ad spend, or content velocity. It lets you actively target the companies you want to work with instead of waiting passively for them to find you.

AOV as a Critical Filter for Outbound Success
Besnik emphasizes a foundational principle: outbound only makes economic sense if your product’s average order value (AOV) is high enough. If your annual deal size is below $5,000, you’ll struggle to make outbound work at scale. That’s because outbound involves multiple steps data enrichment, copywriting, software costs, deliverability tools, SDR time and all of that adds up. For lower-ticket SaaS, inbound or PLG might make more sense. But for high-AOV products, outbound becomes not only viable but essential to predictable growth.

Why Founders Need to Be Resourceful Early On
Outbound isn’t just for big sales teams. It’s a powerful tool for early-stage founders especially those without huge marketing budgets. If you can’t afford paid ads or an SDR team, you need a low-cost, high-control channel to bring in users. That’s outbound. The most resourceful founders use tools like LinkedIn automation, intent-based targeting, and cold email to find early adopters, validate messaging, and build revenue from scratch. Outbound gives you speed and direct feedback, both of which are critical when you’re trying to get from $0 to $10K MRR.

Start with the Right ICP and Messaging
Everything starts with ICP—your Ideal Customer Profile. Many outbound campaigns fail simply because they’re too broad. You need to niche down, segment precisely, and write messaging that speaks to the exact pain point of that audience. That means using buyer-specific language, referencing tools or workflows they already use, and showing relevant social proof. One effective approach: if you’re targeting SaaS CMOs using FirstPromoter, say so directly in your message and share a case study from a similar customer. Relevance beats personalization every time.

The Importance of Tool Selection and Security
Your tech stack matters. Choose outbound tools that prioritize deliverability, compliance, and account safety. Many cheap tools scrape LinkedIn recklessly or send cold emails with poor IP setups, leading to bans or domain blacklisting. SalesFlow.io, for example, built in systems to protect your LinkedIn account and ensure you stay within safe daily limits. Besnik warns against focusing solely on flashy features—instead, prioritize platforms that support long-term, safe, and scalable outbound efforts.

Building Messaging That Actually Converts
Effective outbound messaging is specific, structured, and aligned with prospect pain—not spammy or salesy. Founders should move beyond superficial personalization like {first name} or {company name} and instead build messaging based on segmentation logic. For instance, you could write one sequence for B2B SaaS CMOs using HubSpot and another for sales leaders using Salesforce. By aligning your message with tech stack, job title, funding stage, or recent activity, you make your outreach feel relevant—not random. This kind of personalization at scale is what moves response rates from 5% to 30%+.

AI’s Role in Outbound Sales Personalization
AI is reshaping outbound—not by fully automating it, but by making personalization scalable. Tools like ChatGPT, Clay, and SalesFlow now allow founders to turn enriched data (like company size, tools used, funding news) into highly tailored outbound messages. You can upload a spreadsheet, have AI identify patterns, and auto-generate copy that reflects actual buyer context. This is deeper than basic mail merge—it’s relevance, not just personalization. The best outbound campaigns today are built with AI assisting the research and writing process, not replacing it.

What Response Rates Can You Expect?
Besnik shares that top-performing outbound campaigns on SalesFlow.io average 35% response rates. These aren’t just opens or clicks—these are actual replies. The key is not pushing for a meeting too early. Instead, aim to start conversations. Ask questions, reference tools or problems you know they have, and offer insight rather than a sales pitch. Once you’ve engaged the prospect, meetings and demos become a natural next step. A conversation-first mindset drastically improves engagement and reduces friction.

How to Handle Rejections in Cold Outreach
A “no” is never final. Rejections are a goldmine of data. They help refine your ICP, test your messaging, and build a list of warm future prospects. Create a stage in your CRM for “not now” leads and revisit them every 90–120 days. People change jobs, budgets get approved, timing shifts. Besnik recommends keeping track of why people said no and using that to tailor your follow-ups down the line. Rejections are often just delayed conversions.

The Future of Outbound Sales
The outbound landscape is evolving quickly. Email deliverability is getting harder, while LinkedIn is becoming more protective but also more valuable. The future belongs to those who combine first-party data, CRM insights, AI, and real buyer intent to create multichannel campaigns. Outbound won’t be about volume—it’ll be about timing, relevance, and data intelligence. Winners will use AI to scale personalization and combine that with signals like tech usage, hiring trends, or product activity to reach buyers before they even enter the market.

Best Advice for SaaS Founders Doing Outbound in 2025
Treat every prospect like they matter—because they do. Don’t rely on templates or copy/paste strategies. Take the time to research your niche, understand what your prospects are thinking, and speak to that. Outbound success comes down to empathy, structure, and persistence. Avoid shallow personalization gimmicks and instead focus on meaningful relevance. Besnik’s advice: outbound isn’t dead, bad outbound is. If you can show your prospects you understand their world, they will listen.

Tips for Founders from 0 to $10K MRR
Outbound is your fastest path to validation and early traction. Instead of pitching, reach out with curiosity. Ask your prospects what problems they face, how they’ve tried to solve them, and where the gaps are. These conversations turn into insights, and insights turn into users. For founders with no audience or funding, outbound becomes your direct line to product-market fit. Use automation to scale your research, not replace the conversation. Every early deal you close through outbound brings both revenue and clarity.

Key Timestamp

• (0:00) – Episode intro by Joran Hofman
  (0:52) – Guest intro: Besnik Vreljaku
• (1:32) – Icebreaker: “Worst cold outreach fail you’ve seen?”
• (3:11) – Does outbound still work? (Spoiler: Yes, but it’s evolving)
• (4:25) – Why SaaS founders should care about outbound (esp. bootstrapped)
• (6:10) – Case study: Niche ICPs (e.g., affiliate program migration)
  (7:40) – #1 Mistake: Low AOV (< $5K) → Hard to scale
• (9:57) – Solution: Start with high-ACV customers
• (10:39) – ACV vs. AOV: What’s the difference?
• (12:07) – Step 1: Choose the right tool (Security > shiny features)
• (14:13) – Step 2: Niche down ICPs + use social proof
• (14:38) – Step 3: Hyper-personalization (Custom variables > generic)
• (16:45) – Pro tip: Use AI (Claude, Warmly) for data enrichment
• (17:48) – Avoid fake personalization (e.g., fake logos)
• (20:04) – SalesFlow’s benchmark: 35% reply rates
• (21:47) – Rejections: “No” is the start of the conversation
• (26:07) – Future trend: First-party data + AI prospecting
• (27:49) – Why LinkedIn > Email (email deliverability drop)
• (29:02) – $0–$10K MRR: Validate with outbound interviews or paid ads
• (30:48) – $10K–$10M ARR: Bet on people + brand momentum
• (32:12) – Expect compromises: AI competitors, pricing pressure
• (34:39) – Recap of key takeaways
• (36:19) – Connect with Besnik

Transcription

Besnik Vrellaku (00:00)
If your AOV is almost below maybe 5,000, you need to find a really repeatable, really fast for your tool, AOV in 5K a year, right? In terms of value, like you’re going to find it very difficult to make it work. 80 % of our bulb is failing is simply because they’re just using generic terms and people are getting smarter at identifying that. So I just think actually majority of what most people are doing is not good enough. Do you have the budget for advertisement? Do you have people to hire us?

Call call for STRs. As STRs for example, can you afford at the beginning? No, you can’t, you know. So you have to use as much automation as you can because you’re limited in resources. You have to think resourceful. The only reason why even weaker at the beginning. Do you know why? We allow those types of founders to have a net new channel. It was a tactic wrapped into a solution and that works.

Joran Hofman (00:52)
you

Today were diving into one of the biggest challenges for SaaS founders, building a repeatable outbound sales process that actually works. It’s no secret that most outbound campaigns fail, sometimes burning prospects and damaging your brand in the process. My guest today is Besnik Vreljkou, founder of SalesFlow.io, a leading LinkedIn outreach and sales automation platform that helped thousands of teams improve their outbound sales results. We’re going to break down why so many outbound efforts fall short.

what mistakes to avoid and how you can fix your outbound sales strategy to consistently drive revenue. Welcome to Joe Besnick. Hey, name is You know I’m Dutch. We dive right in. I want to hear a story. Like we’re going to start with a story. Like what is the worst cold outreach or fail you’ve ever seen?

Besnik Vrellaku (01:32)
pleasure, thank you.

I mean it’s changed right? What used to be bad used to be great. What is used to see great is terrible now. So it’s just for me like the truth be told it’s folks that’s just talking the same language they used to be back in the day. Right? So I just think that what most people are doing over I think you know like you rightly put 80 % of how bulk is failing is simply because they’re just using generic terms.

and people are getting smarter at identifying that. So I just think actually majority of what most people are doing is not good enough. An example would be just the basic ones. I did a post recently, why are you saying we used go to the same college or saying, hey, you’re working in this field doing this. I know what I do. Like why you want to connect. They’ll just talking about the stating facts you already know.

Joran Hofman (02:35)
Yeah, often when I receive those messages, like I have 16,000 connections on LinkedIn, they say, Hey, I see we’re both connected to this person. I’m not even sure if I’m connected to them.

Besnik Vrellaku (02:45)
I think it’s more the underlying in the psychology smartness of the content itself. It’s like why are you stating things that or making assumptions about things basically that may not be true then you look like an idiot.

Joran Hofman (02:59)
start at the basics. We already said most outbound sales fail, right? I don’t know if the 80 % is completely true. Does outbound sales really still matter in 2025? What is your opinion here?

Besnik Vrellaku (03:11)
The first thing is about what’s happening in the industry, right? If you’re seeing all these businesses grow, even for ourselves, like lead generation businesses, prospecting businesses, Apollo, Outreach, ourselves, all the other companies that exist in the market are growing. The sector continues to evolve. And when you see the sector evolving, means that people are paying because they’re getting value from something. Nobody’s forced to pay anything.

And most smart people will realize that they get an ROI, even for us, a transactional based model. We’re growing. Do know why we’re growing? For example, is because at any point, if we do not perform return on investment for customers, they will simply churn. They will simply not use the service or rather than just switch and be on. So I think like that in itself, if you want a macro level statistics on the sales tech sector, that it works.

It’s evolving, changing, tools are adjusting, things are happening, behaviors are changing psychologically and expectation wise. So how are we meeting renewed expectations that our bound is really the sort of the real question here about where our bound works. And my short answer is 100%.

Joran Hofman (04:25)
We’re

going to dive into the new expectations in a second. Before we dive into that, like I’m, we’re both SaaS founders ourselves, right? So you kind of mentioned it already, it still works. I haven’t been doing it much, but why should SaaS founders care about doing outbound sales? It always looks like a lot of effort and only for that 20%. So why do they have to care about it?

Besnik Vrellaku (04:45)
what’s

alternative? If your bootstrap business, let’s say you’re the beginning stages, there’s obviously a variety of stages companies are, but if your bootstrap started at the beginning, like it’s all in the numbers at the end of the day, like it wouldn’t work for everybody, it’s not always for everybody, it depends on your ICP and your AOV numbers, your sales cycle, all these nuances will depend, right? I’m not there to teach you exactly that, but what I do know, statistics there is…

simply because what are your alternatives? Do you have the budget for advertisement? Do you have people to hire us to call call for STRs as STRs for example, like can you afford at the beginning? No, you can’t, you know. So you have to use as much automation as you can because that you’re limited in resources. You have to think resourceful. The only reason like even weaker at the beginning. Do you know why? We allow those types of founders to have a net new channel. It was a tactic wrapped into a solution and that works.

And it’s just an additional channel. should be within your overall sales strategy. not just even if someone came to me, ⁓ Albound your only sales channel you should vote? No, definitely not. Right? You’ve got 3,001 channels and revenue streams that you should be going after. But if you do not try, you do not know, you realize that you’re leaving a lot of revenue on the table because those customers aren’t in Google searching terms or finding your site. They know they have that problem, for example.

Joran Hofman (06:10)
you have to create a problem like we had a session about that as well. Like for example, for ourself, we’re gonna start with outbound and what we’re going to do is we’re going to target like a really specific certain type of client who’s already running an affiliate program and where we can actually migrate them over to us. So typical, really specific ICP, really specific problem, clear messaging towards them. I think that’s also the power of doing outbound where you can actually target the people you need to get.

Besnik Vrellaku (06:37)
Yeah, exactly. And there’s one use case of many. Of course, most don’t have a product market fit and they don’t have that. Maybe they’re trying to get that or there’s other use cases. The whole purpose is a messaging system that you’re forcing through that you’re not dependent on Google to deliver you opportunities. Why would you do that? The whole purpose of being proactive is pushing through that plateau that you would kind of have in your business because you have these dependencies.

in inbound, which is great to have if you can find volume and SEO kicks in after a year, two years, three years, fine, amazing. But that’s not everybody.

Joran Hofman (07:16)
Yeah, it’s a quick way to validate as well. guess, as you mentioned, like if you’re going to be dependent on Google, you’d have to put a lot of money in on paid ads or wait until the results actually come from SEO. So I guess we now establish outbound works. You need to do it. But why do you think most of them outbound sales still fail? Like we kind of covered a little bit already, but what are the top reasons it usually fails?

Besnik Vrellaku (07:40)
think it’s down to your original offering, in my personal opinion, to make it worth the fight that it takes an eye out, right? Because if you’re selling, what I’ve noticed, and I had this when I was in New York, we don’t discuss in a round table tech week. One of the key things is push forward. It’s like, you know what’s changing? And I’ve found a lot of the cases, your AOV and there’s a filter. If you’re in my personal opinion, if your AOV and based on some of the data that we have, that

that really. But if your AOV is almost below maybe 5000, you need to find a really repeatable, really fast for your AOV 5k a year, in terms of value. You’re going to find it very difficult to make it work. I’m talking about volume, I’m talking about scale and the longer sales cycle that outbound comes with it to make it worthwhile your time. Before you can sell $100, 1,000, 2,000 a year.

AOV deals, which is fine, but not scalable. Like you have to get involved in sending 10,000, 20,000 emails even justify it, but that’s not even sustainable is the word. But once you were offering as a product fits into the 5k plus mark, you started to make it worthwhile that additional effort that comes from nurturing, re-following up, not just following up with the ticket, but once they show intent or conversation, because then you’ve got to continue that.

conversation. It’s not in their budget. You just came out of the wind work, right, into their whole business life. So I think here it’s about just filtering also under quickly to understand all the statistics that comes with outbound, right? AOV, then okay, how most of the conversation braids, if you were able to quickly experiment, validate that quickly enough, otherwise I’ve seen many businesses that have tried to make outbound work at lower than that.

They’ll start to blame the product or the ICP or the messaging. They’ll test it 3,000 and one, but then your numbers aren’t working. Even if you were to close one deal, I think what’s changing the most in Alpound is that range of filter beyond messaging, ICP is actually the undercore value price point that you’re offering for that figure to make sense in Alpound.

Joran Hofman (09:57)
I guess I could you mentioned like targeting the right customers So if you do have a product which have maybe lower tier pricing and does have some higher tier pricing Focus on the ones who are fit for the higher tier pricing and only run out bond on those

Besnik Vrellaku (10:10)
That’s why we see the biggest success. Xabans not easy, but it can work if your price aligns to it quite right.

Joran Hofman (10:17)
So

I guess like we would even chop it up into open like a step by step, right? So if somebody now thinks like, okay, I want to start with sales outbound. What is the first thing they should do? Probably then look at their ICP, look at the AOV. I think people also always check or name it ACV. Is that the same or is there a difference between ACV and AOV?

Besnik Vrellaku (10:39)
ACV, well, I mean, the average order value, it typically is what you expect clients to be paying, right? I mean, there’s two parts to that question here, but I think it’s about, okay, what they project the client to have and what they pay is two different things based on that, right? So I think the price point is, it’s obviously a net opportunity because you have to calculate your expansion.

potential in business. There could be a lot of partner led where you see that then you invest in for the long haul. The new payback period is going to be in six months, maybe 12 months. Same with you going through POC deals, for example, that’s like a different, you still need to get some return there, but you’re looking down the hall. But then what you realize is you’re accumulating pipeline for the future. You start to play catch up until you build that pipeline. But just to go back to the first part of the question is, where should they be when they do an HoundPound is nowadays you

obviously quite clearly selecting the right tool is going to make sense because there’s three thousand and one tools, okay. So, ElSlo is one of many. But the question that really people should hone down is why specific tool? Is it pricing? Is it volume that you expect? Or is it longevity, which is about sustainable? Can I ensure if I connect my LinkedIn and my email that my account’s not going to get banned or my email, my domain, the party is not going to get banned? Because you know what? If any of those two go,

But even in our bound starts to work, none of it’s going to matter. So it’s one of the key things that I, at least I say is actually just pick one that is going to be a foundational approach for longevity. Security, for example, one of the key things that we’ve done very well with is that. And I say that because I’ve seen many accounts get blocked and it doesn’t matter what tool or $99 or $50 you’re spending because you’ve got none of it in place anymore. I think the first thing is just to start there. Everyone can send messages. Everybody can send this and that.

Okay, maybe one or two little shiny features here and there. Then the second part is just about the, know, cause security I’d say is part of like deliverability of whatever you’re doing. So it’s like a foundational skeleton actually is that. Then, I mean, of course, like if you’re existing customers and you know who those a hundred first customers are, that’s very easy, right? Ultimately, if the, you know, Tam’s enough there, you should be going there. You should be getting the case studies cause you’re resonating by industry.

Because most people buy because if they’ve know, you know, hey, you’re on, do you know how many affiliate programs, partners are using as a success in this tool? That just changes the conversation piece that, wow, it does work because we’ve had many similar parties have used it. I should too, or for different ICP. So I think there’s just about finding great reference, social proof, social proofing in your messages starts to become really important. ICPs can always change the sub 3001, but I think it’s just about finding.

a niche one that you can have a lot of social proof and a lot of segmenting, not just across your messaging, but also your LinkedIn profile, your website that they link and look to, right? Most people outbound, how many times you go and check their website, even though the link, even they send you a link, people still click on it to see if they can resonate with it. What we’ve done in the past and what we’ve seen a lot of people do is you create multiple pages at scale, hundreds of landing pages that can speak to that end prospect.

starting out would be like right security platforms for longevity and just something that you can resonate so much with that particular person that you have conversations.

Joran Hofman (14:13)
You mentioned really niche down segment on your ICP to really, guess, be able to also add social proof towards the messaging. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. And if we then move on, let’s say we did this, what would be the next steps? We’re going to create the messaging. there best practices into that besides, I guess, adding the social proof? Like if you’re going to do LinkedIn outreach, what kind of best practices do you see here?

Besnik Vrellaku (14:38)
me it’s about if you can get access to as much data about your prospects as you can, rather than using default fields that Salesforce and every other tool have, create custom variables and fields. It’s a bit more work, but you’ve got 400 in your ammunition, right? Now it’s just, that’s why it’s become such a quality game with LinkedIn and even multi-channel engine in my personal opinion. Like how are you, not just social proof is, but

really that I would say a lot of custom variables. If you think about, if you know yourself for using First Promoter, hey, what if I can tell you that these are the cool benefits to why from your users First Promoter, I’m sure there’s tools to figure out X, Y, Z based on links, maybe get a data entry person that can identify everybody that has First Promoter at all. And then you go in directly and pinpoint in custom variable 400 of those people. I’m pretty sure they have 400 folks.

Finding that, now you’re targeting, you’re just getting to the progress. Look, I know you have this, but let me tell you why it’s better. Here’s an alternative page, for example. Okay, why wouldn’t I be against that? I’m already doing affiliate marketing. You’re not selling me on affiliates. Now you’re selling me on wire. We’ve got a database because I know exactly why we’re considering your end is because of the database, right? You’ve had an anchoring point there. If you use custom variables and you import the CSV of that data,

That would be like the best practices. And then not just that, maybe there’s other use cases. Like you’ve noticed you’ve somehow managed to enrich your data using Warmly or R2B2B, and other tools out there, CommonRune can enrich website visitors. The big use case, for example, practices. So what Outbound’s going is rather than just pulling some generic folks based on a sales navigator search, is you have the data intent strategy come in from different use cases.

Most people do not do that, know why? It requires more effort. And people don’t want to put effort, they want to just off the bat come in and done, right? So I think that would be, in my view, what we’ve seen some great success is people that genuinely take it seriously through the…

Joran Hofman (16:45)
tactics. ⁓

Besnik Vrellaku (16:58)
100 % personal. mean, this defined personalization, Personalize is being able to resonate with somebody, right? In terms of personalization, if you can resonate. What’s the best way to resonate with folks? That’s just through understanding for those data channels, basically. So yes, absolutely. Cause sometimes people can mistake in personalization through, ⁓ I’m going to put your own logo in my text. And that’s being personalized. Like, you know what I mean though?

Or I’m going to know about sales and like, you’re as company, I’m going to add it radius into one of my copies, but that’s not really personalization.

Joran Hofman (17:37)
if

I’m always a bad person, I guess in a way, or if I see the email too much in a way, but it’s so cringy sometimes where you see your own logo on a laptop screen or… Variables. And we’re like, okay, come on.

Besnik Vrellaku (17:48)
100 %

agree. So that’s why I think people should understand actually what personalization really is data. It’s understanding and intelligence about you and prospects. The more you have about them, the more they’re likely to warm up, respond and engage with you because you’ve done your homework.

Joran Hofman (18:12)
Are

you struggling to find a cost effective and scalable marketing channel? Check out ReadyTis. We help you to have other people recommend your SaaS and you would only pay them when they deliver you paid clients, making it very cost effective and scalable marketing channel. One and more, go to getreadytis.com. One of my questions was supposed to be like, are you able to personalize things using AI and automation? You kind of answered already, you can leverage different tools, but how do you see AI and automation in being able to personalize things?

Besnik Vrellaku (18:42)
The sales process is big, right? There’s just so many components, but let’s focus on outreach. And it’s just about actually, we know we talk about the custom variables. It’s about using AI to organize that data and finding that data. If you were to say, have a hundred people right now, you put in a spreadsheet, we use AI copilot, Claude, whatever you want, right? It doesn’t matter, right? Although Claude for copyright and others for generic use. I mean, we can talk about that as well, but

Actually, what I would do is how can you use it to help in that data piece? That manual work that we said requires effort, right? That’s where AI becomes useful. Don’t over… It’s just, that’s a perfect manual step. So I think it’s just finding a way to create copy for every single prospect automatically based on all that data points that you just inserted and let it create one for each of those persons, because it can evaluate all the company. It can evaluate all the context behind that.

individual or company, for example, and profile it. So think AI is going to be used heavily to aggregate in all that data to create a message for every single person automatically instead of using that. So you don’t want to personalize this and add that. That’s what AI is going to be powerful in as simple as that.

Joran Hofman (19:58)
and they did all this, like what are the response rates they should be expecting? Any insights?

Besnik Vrellaku (20:04)
Average, we were in sad stock in Austin and our average response rate is 35 % across millions and months, millions of different connection nodes, responses, and all the messaging that we have, multi-million. So it’s average in 35%. I’m talking about conversation here, not meetings. I’m not talking about, so it’s really to do with conversations that, okay, well, that’s your goal. Again, they’re trying to get a meeting straight away. You’re trying to have conversations where you can start.

to communicate value proposition. It’s been 35%.

Joran Hofman (20:37)
15 minute coffee chat proposal

Besnik Vrellaku (20:40)
could work. Some people are just like that. Nobody wants to waste 15 minutes of their time unless it’s some neutral thing. example, this people are struggling. People don’t want more meetings. They want to get to the point quicker. It’s a transactional relationship. Let’s be honest here. When people say build relationship, if you want to build relationships, show up in person to these conferences and meet them multiple times, then do business. Like, you’re on, we met with each other, for example.

I’d say this is what we call, because we met the retreat in Barcelona, I’m much more willing to compromise even small little nuanced features with other larger competitors because I know you and I trust you and I’d rather give the money to somebody by the way that I have a relationship by someone I know I can count on. And it’s not just some kind of transactional model. Sometimes that helps. Do know why? Because you have that personalization approach. even in early days that we have.

That personalized service of migration of accounts like you perfectly mentioned before this call got recorded is exactly the reason why those kind of relationships matter. So I think because it’s transactional, you do have to get to the point.

Joran Hofman (21:47)
Nice. When we go back to the 35%, so from the 35 % you mentioned conversations. But there’s also conversations where people do not want what you actually are selling, right? So you’re going to get a lot of rejections. mean, I did cold outreach, people were on phone back in the day. You get a lot of rejections. Any insights on if somebody is now starting with cold outreach, they’re going to get a lot of rejections, how to deal with those.

Besnik Vrellaku (22:14)
many a times that you can convert no’s to yeses or you can find ways to leverage that. It’s a response, by the way. It’s an engagement. Hallelujah. You know, so someone’s actually responded, said, no, thanks. Or they said, look, you know, not right now. Or they said, look, you know, you’re using a competitor. There’s so many to it. And I think that’s just a perfect opportunity for you to go swinging back with specific further questions, further queries. Okay. But why? What’s…

Why wouldn’t you want ex statistics or going back by data or hey, do you know what? At least get them on a newsletter. How else can you leverage that? Now you have a conversation. How can you leverage that conversation? No rejection. It’s a conversation. Treat rejections as conversation points for the future. Sometimes you might be like, hey, you want to share the whole purpose of some people. They got them into their network now. How can you use it to share knowledge moving forward and prove people wrong or prove them otherwise?

Or if it’s not a fit, let’s say it’s, I don’t know, it’s quite clear, you know, if something’s not a fit, it’s a B2C model, then you’ll be B2B, but that’s not going to happen. But what you realize over time, people change jobs and opportunities and you should be using your, within your workflows, if those things come about in the future, there’s still a network, you know, so I wouldn’t disqualify them completely. So I think treating all rejections as just haste conversations.

Because you’re right, sometimes it’s not the right time, someone’s going to maybe be restructuring something like that. So I think it’s about keeping tabs and organized with all those conversations because you will be shocked and surprised that many a times that you will go back to those conversations. You will go back to those conversations and say, you know what, actually, this guy told me X, we tagged them, have a schedule in reschedule and you can do that automatically. People forget we’re humans. For instance, in our inbox, we released a lot of the snooze and

rescheduling the scheduling of this conversation. So you can do that later automatically for that reason, for that use case, or you can tag and use that tag in to sync to your CRM system. you’ll be in the future. You can manage that pipeline of conversations or rejections. Great. I would create a whole pipeline of rejections. That’s literally the way of it’s saying and say, okay, all right. In which stage of the rejection cycle are they in? I’d create a whole pipeline just on that. That’s the way I would handle it.

Joran Hofman (24:34)
Yeah,

because I like it. mentioned it’s the beginning of a conversation. People could move on. So definitely do not burn bridges if you actually have a conversation. And yes, 100%. You’re to do things on LinkedIn and you are a connection and you do start sharing a lot on LinkedIn. I know not everybody does, but like in our case, people will come back at one.

Besnik Vrellaku (24:54)
That’s the whole purpose of posting, just being engaged because it’s an impression.

Joran Hofman (24:58)
Let’s dive into a fun question. If you had to summarize your best advice on a sales outbound, what would you say?

Besnik Vrellaku (25:05)
in that work to personalize outreach with every single person that you’re connecting with. Don’t look at them anymore as spray and pray approach. You have to look at them as numbers and opportunities, net potential. And I think when you look at those prospects like that, you have to really invest at the beginning of every single contact, treat every word and every sentence, every something that you can resonate or personalization of who they are, what they do, what data can you get. Invest heavily there.

because the rest of the tools that they do, they’re ultimately just a delivery mechanism. So if you’re more focused on the messaging system or your horse or your car journey with that delivery versus the the data that fuels responses itself, that would be my strongest advice is actually invest more there in 2025.

Joran Hofman (25:56)
look more into the future? Like what kind of trends do you currently see happening? We talked a little bit about AI being able to take some of the manual work away. there any other trends you see in SaaS Outbound?

Besnik Vrellaku (26:07)
How else can data get more intelligent? Look at your CRMD. How many people are analyzing all the customers? What data points they all share that are your successful? High LTV customers, for example. No one can just analyze that. just assume. But I think it’s being to a point where you can really get stronger lookalikes at scale about exactly what they do and how you can replicate that. So I think that that’s one of the key things that I believe

will continue to be at overseas. Just about how else you can do that at scale automatically is then you can use that to reach out to those specific people to improve those rates or maintain those rates. Because what we’re seeing about email plummeted in open rates, plummeted in deliverability has become an art to try and get it right. And LinkedIn is coming back because they focus on quality. And it’s probably a thing that they limited it to a thousand, a hundred, four hundred invites a month. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was a good thing.

So that’s why now, you know, that platform’s up because it’s a quality game. And when it’s a quality game, you have to up your data and your response rates to compensate for that 2000 invites you used to back in the day. So I think that of course, it’s just you analyzing all that data through AI is going to be massively important. That’s the whole purpose. I personally is how you can aggregate all that data to come up with all the signals, the value prompts yourself. So you create, first party data.

is going to be huge. You combine it with third party data, then you’ve got now your refined list target. Most people just want to use our Polar’s data to list. Well, good luck. As it’s not, it’s then you you’re setting up yourself for failure.

Joran Hofman (27:49)
You need to start combining it to get the best profile for yourself to really narrow it down.

Besnik Vrellaku (27:53)
Exactly. And of course you can go into much more like analyzing data and how I was going to do there about your response rates and, or your conversation rates or what’s the best way to turn that conversation into a meeting, a meeting to a sale. think a lot of contextualized data is going to evolve massively where you can actually support in the sales cycle or the timing of it. A lot of the cases and things that we’re also working on is like, how do you try and time specific time to ensure engagements?

conversation rates of time. So the rest of it is just personalization at scale and resonating how you do that without the manual work. So I think that we’re going to see a lot of massive work that’s already been happening with lots of AISDRs and beyond, but I think it’s more about just the system. It’s about contextualizing net new data and intent will continue to be kind of the focus, I believe.

Joran Hofman (28:49)
Let’s dive in the ending questions. So if we just take it, I guess, more general, what kind of advice would you have for a SaaS founder who’s just starting out and growing from zero to 10k monthly recurrent revenue?

Besnik Vrellaku (29:02)
It just depends what product you have. There’s so many, but obviously the best way to quickly to validate if you’re on pre-product market fit is one of the key things I’ve did in multiple of my ventures in the past, right? Cause it’s not my first rodeo at sales floor. I’ve had quite a few different ones is that we do a lot of outreach out LinkedIn, email and beyond, and just getting the interview calls. So what’s your pain point? I understand them. The majority of the time those interviews will end up as potential customers because it’ll be incredibly high.

incredibly high rate to interview them, put them part of a report and adjustment, you know, a feeling who doesn’t like to look good and beyond, you know, we did it 40 creators that we put together, every single one of them shared what we did. Well, actually, no, that’s not true. Majority of them did. But all of them engaged with us is my question. So I would say just how are you like that’s why our album becomes so easy, especially at the beginning, because the investment is more in your grit and in your genuine tactics that you want to use.

So anyone that’s just growing and validating is either that or naturally you find a way to just, you know, if you have got the budget seed money, the best way to quickly validate your concept is zero to hundred and it’s actually driving traffic, paid ads. Actually the quickest way to validate it, and it’s expensive as well, is ads to get to a zero to a hundred. Those two would be my zero to a hundred is really, you know, it’s proactive, our bound of interview style.

And B is just you actually spend money on advertisement to get a few grand in MRR.

Joran Hofman (30:34)
That’s

shoot, now we reach 10K MRR and we’re gonna make a huge step, know. We’re gonna go towards 10 million AR. So you can chop it up, you can do however you want, but what kind of advice would you give SaaS founders here?

Besnik Vrellaku (30:48)
Let’s just say 10 to a minute could be anywhere, right? But it’s just about people. Let’s be honest, as a business, sometimes you could have bet not just your channels, maybe it’s got you to your 100, 200 grand, you’ve got to start betting on people. You better your business offers value. If you’re a fundraiser, capital, your own VC for yourself, how am I going to manage my resources that I have really strategic, place bets in different areas to see net growth?

for anybody at that stage, say a few hundred K, they’ve got validation, they’ve got proof of concept, they’ve got revenues, customers, you want to grow. You’ve to start placing bets on people so that you can multiply the efforts that are happening because whatever you can do by yourself is only going to yield so much. So people, when it gets to, know, when I start building on brand, because you have to build on brand, you need other people to speak about you. One of the biggest things that we’ve had on

Strongest correlation is how do you get other people to speak about you the most? Mention is the creation of momentum to get you from a one to five or then five to even 10 is building that momentum in that market space where people are just speaking about you paid or organic or whatever it might be. That’s the way to do it in my view, to get to that scale.

Joran Hofman (32:04)
Final question, if you could have a clickable, what should SaaS founders prepare for in the next two to three years?

Besnik Vrellaku (32:12)
prepare for compromises and then basically, because I think most people are wondering what’s going to happen in AI in your industries, but be prepared for compromises, whether it’s pricing, whether it’s your, how are you going to adjust your roadmap really quickly. I think people have to be prepared for and adjust expectations, even in growth, because a lot of net new players are coming in.

They don’t have the legacy of systems. When you grew your business to one to 10, for example, like to just change your system, to adapt to a whole new product, like product, it’s going to take a lot of time. You’re dealing with customers, you’re dealing with thousands and thousands of customers. So you’re going to be faced with an existential threats in the marketplace. It’s about how are you adjusting your business to the incoming of competition, the lower barriers of entry.

because of AI is creating. So I think it’s about where are going to compromise? And I think that’s the biggest business advice for SaaS founders, even net new. It’s like, you really compelling enough to grow? so I think beyond that, I think that’s going to be a big, big pondering shift in the landscape is going to be really around compromise. It could be different segments of your business. Compromise, think that’s why I see things that come into place.

You have to pivot along with those changes like any other phase we’ve had in the internet, by the way. And it’s one of them. Let’s, let’s go back to the humbles of compromise, adjustment and survival and can make you want to maintain your growth rate in short. It would be that. I think because that’s coming so fast, so unpredictably, now we can predict a little bit better. We can understand the appetite of people. But I also wouldn’t, you know, I think at the same time, just

being calculated in your risks and bets because most people I think are seeing it too much of a disruptor where I think, know, AI will, it’s not that easy just to rep, you know, for people, for you in the business and markets to be all the time completely transformed and just all of a sudden it will slowly for sure happen some faster than others understanding your market. And I think that’s kind of the crystal I see is that is

is just about there’s going to be moments of compromise and you could understand when you need to make those compromises and very quickly.

Joran Hofman (34:39)
Let me try to summarize. So we go all the way to the beginning. Outbound still works if you put in actual work. First of all, of course, consider what are your alternatives. But the key is of course, making yourself less dependent on Google, either as paid ads or SEO. When you are going to do outbound, select the right tool, check pricing, volume, sustainability, and of course, deliverability.

When you’re going to do it niche down, segment, make sure you can really resonate with the ICP you’re targeting, add social proof to some messaging, create custom variables to really personalize the messaging, leverage therefore different data sources, leverage AI to organize things and do more on scale and try to aim for a 35 plus percent response rate. A rejection.

It’s actually an engagement. So it’s the beginning of a conversation. So you, from there, you can actually ask questions, get deeper insights. Don’t burn bridges because people move roles and you might get them in later on. Do check if it’s actually worth your words for yourself. So check ACV. Does it actually make sense for you to, run outbound? If we’re talking about going to 10 K MR run surveys, try paid ads if you have the money, but it all comes down to grid. Go get at it.

10 million AR comes down to people on brand to make bets on people and multiply the benefits of both, try to build up momentum basically. And what you mentioned at the beginning would work yesterday, won’t work today. You mentioned it for outbound, but I think it completely fits in the last things you said. You have to be prepared for making compromises in future.

Cool, well these are all your words. If people want to get in contact with you best, Nick, how can they do so?

Besnik Vrellaku (36:19)
Nick is my first name, Raleck is my surname. Connect with me on LinkedIn. We just released a lot of AI outreach prompting because that starts to become really important to what we’ve discussed today. We have a lot of resources on our website sales flow section. Take a look, read, understand. If you can’t be bothered to read it, upload it to Chad GPT and say, give me five bullet points of the most important things that I need to know or related to what you’re trying to do, challenge, that.

You know, it’s a resource you can use in different ways. So those would be the two ways.

Joran Hofman (36:52)
George,

the LinkedIn profile, Besnik is easy to spell, Velik who might be a bit more difficult for people. And then we’re going to link to salesflow.io with the AI prompting so people can check that out as well. Thanks for coming on. For people listening on Spotify, please leave a review and answer the poll we’re adding to it. It just helps us to boost the algorithms. And again, thank you for coming on Besnik.

Besnik Vrellaku (37:13)
My pleasure. Enjoy today. Thank you.

Joran Hofman (37:15)
Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast. You made it till the end. So I think we can assume you liked this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you liked this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show. If you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about where it is, feel free to reach out as well. But for now,

Have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.