AI-assisted personalized outreach, outbound sequences, and sales message drafting

I have a Google Sheet that fills up with new leads whenever they come in for our product. I run a separate chat connected to Bright Data for search, Google Sheets, and Gmail. It looks up extra information on each lead, fills in the missing fields, and drafts a personalized email saved directly into Gmail.

Not long ago I’d have done a good chunk of this by hand. Now I hand over most of the clicking to AI. I still read every draft before it goes out and sometimes do adjustments. Nothing sends without me.

If you use Claude from Anthropic, add Apollo as a connector and do real Apollo work without leaving the chat.

In one conversation, you can:
- Find prospects using natural language
- Enrich people or companies
- Create or update contacts
- Draft and send one-off emails
- Create sequences, improve steps, and generate variants
- Add contacts to an existing sequence
- Create and manage tasks
- Analyze your team's performance

My outbound activity is up over 500%. My cold call volume is up over 1,200%. And I haven't added a single hour to my week.

Notion hasn't changed how I sell — but it's completely changed how I spend my time.

The hours I used to spend reading the news, scanning alerts, and trying to turn it all into something I could actually tie to Notion's value and bring into prospect conversations? Most of that happens now while I'm asleep.

In this video I walk through one of the many automated workflows I've built for myself and run every single day.

It scans all 75 accounts in my book of business, surfaces the breaking news and hot topics for specific accounts, and flags the persistent themes showing up across all of them — the shared challenges I can build a real point of view around. Then it takes that POV and automatically drafts targeted cold outreach against it.

All before I wake up.

Since I rolled this out at the start of May, that jump in activity has directly sourced more than $300K in new pipeline — not because I'm working more hours, but because the prep and the POV building are already done before I sit down.

I get to spend my time on the part that actually closes deals — the conversations.

If you're a sales leader and you want to learn how to replicate workflows like this for you or your team, comment "Custom Agent" below and I'll reach out — or just DM me directly.

2 months ago, if you had asked me how long I spend researching prospects and writing personalized outbound emails…

I would’ve said:
“Too long.”

20 to 25 minutes per prospect.

Reading LinkedIn profiles.
Understanding company context.
Finding triggers.
Writing relevant emails.
Figuring out who else in the org to target.
Planning follow-ups.

It was effective.
But painfully manual.

So I built something for myself.

Today, I can generate:

• ICP-calibrated prospect intelligence
• personalized outreach angles
• 5-email sequences
• LinkedIn messaging strategies
• stakeholder mapping
• follow-up paths if someone ghosts
• qualification + scoring

…in under 5 minutes per account.

What used to take me hours now happens before my coffee cools down ☕

And the outcome?

Q1: 146% achieved.

That’s when I realized this wasn’t just a personal workflow hack.

It could help other sales teams too.

So I turned it into:
Impact Prospect Intelligence

An AI-powered prospect scoring + outbound intelligence system calibrated to your exact ICP.

If you want access to the trial version, comment:
IMPACT

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#Sales #B2BSales #OutboundSales #Prospecting #AI #SalesAutomation #RevenueOperations #ImpactProspectIntelligence

The best “AI SDR” ideas aren't about replacing SDRs ‼️ They're about giving great reps better systems. Here are 5 takeaways from Clay's livestream yesterday on the AI-native SDR:

1. Start the day from signals, not a task list.
Johnny DeFazio from Notion talked about reps beginning in an internal app that surfaces account-level signals: product usage, engagement, warmth, and activity. That becomes the source of truth for what to action.

2. Build your own signal layer if you don’t have PLG data.
Nicole McKelvey from Decagon shared how her team hunts for signals like AI initiatives, leadership changes, competitor mentions, website visitors, new hires, champions, and warm paths. The goal is to give reps a real reason to reach out.

3. Replace hundreds of sequences with one smart shell.
Rob Cook from Clay described moving from maintaining endless persona/use-case sequences to one shell sequence where AI stacks signals, selects proof points, surfaces pain, and personalizes the message. Humans still review, but the system does the heavy lifting.

4. Teach the workflow manually before automating it.
Rob also said Clay has reps do the job manually before leaning on automation. That one stuck with me. If you can’t do the job well yourself, you probably can’t prompt or automate it well either.

5. Fix data before obsessing over messaging.
Nicole McKelvey put it well: garbage in, garbage out. Better targeting and cleaner data make every downstream workflow better.

The big takeaway: The AI-native SDR isn’t a bot.

It’s a rep with better context, better signal prioritization, better prep, and tighter feedback loops with GTM engineering and ops.

Thank you Davide Grieco for hosting a great session 🔥

#GTMEngineering #SalesDevelopment #AI #OutboundSales

Most salespeople are terrified of AI. I’m not.

AI is not killing great salespeople.

It’s exposing transactional ones.

And after 25+ years carrying a quota at the highest levels for AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Microsoft I believe most people are misunderstanding what’s actually happening right now.

For years, average sellers survived because information itself created leverage.

Customers needed us to:
• Explain products
• Gather information
• Compare vendors
• Translate complexity
• Summarize capabilities
• Coordinate resources

AI is rapidly erasing that advantage.

And honestly?

Good.

Because the best salespeople were never valuable because they had information.

They were valuable because they understood PEOPLE.

According to McKinsey, generative AI could automate up to 60–70% of the activities employees spend time doing today.

Gartner predicts AI agents will soon handle a massive percentage of routine B2B sales interactions.

And Salesforce research shows most buyers now prefer self-service research before ever talking to a salesperson.

That reality terrifies many people in sales.

It doesn’t terrify me at all.

Because once information becomes commoditized…

Trust becomes the differentiator.

AI can summarize a meeting.

But it cannot sit across from an exhausted executive wondering whether this decision could impact their career.

AI can write an email.

But it cannot genuinely understand pressure, politics, fear, burnout, uncertainty, ego, or ambition inside an organization.

AI can automate outreach.

But it cannot earn trust over years of consistency.

That is still profoundly human work.

And ironically, AI is forcing sales back toward what it was always supposed to be:

Human.

The people who are going to dominate this next era are the ones who can:
• Build trust at scale
• Create emotional safety
• Navigate ambiguity
• Understand organizational politics
• Stay calm under pressure
• Connect dots others miss
• Build ecosystems of relationships that survive change
• Make customers feel seen and understood

That’s the future.

I use AI every single day.

Religiously.

It helps me:
• Research organizations in minutes instead of hours
• Understand executive priorities
• Personalize messaging at scale
• Frame strategic meeting hypotheses
• Identify whitespace opportunities
• Analyze negotiation dynamics
• Build better outreach faster

What once took teams days now happens in minutes.

Technology amplifies the person using it.

If the seller lacks empathy, curiosity, discipline, strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, or authentic care for people…

AI simply scales mediocrity faster.

Do you think AI will commoditize salespeople or force the profession to evolve into something far more valuable?

For my entire playbook, check out "Moneyball Sales"
📘 Paperback: https://lnkd.in/gHunVM8R
📱 Kindle: https://lnkd.in/g-3N52Hu
🎧 Audible: https://lnkd.in/gdY6nHkw

All proceeds go to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

Post 224 - Its been a while! In a good way life has been too busy in the real world and in the work world to post on LinkedIn. That said, its a Wednesday so lets see if I can get this rolling again.

AI is a great tool to be able to generate sales copy that is better than the mass emails I get. That said, AI is best utilized as a tool, not to do your job. You still need to be competent. Classic sales outreach strategy says to add personal details. This person went for an easy detail that AI can pick up.

That said, from the structure of the email they went from personal detail to canned message about their solution. You need to commit to personalization, you can't pay lip service to it. Another post on lip service on Friday.

Check This => Prospecting Agent is now GA.

One of our launch customers saw these results:
- 60% of SDR-generated North America pipeline built by Prospecting Agent
- 3x increase in call volumes | 2x email reply rate
- Deployed in 2 weeks — booked meetings that very first week

I killed 4 hours/day of manual outreach with one Claude SDR workflow.

Here’s the 6-step setup I run.

Most teams still treat Claude like a smart chat box.

I treat it like an SDR.
With a job description.
With workflows.
With clear targets.

Step 1: Give it a role

Not: “Write me a LinkedIn message.”

I tell Claude:
“You are my AI SDR. Your job is to find warm signals, score leads from 0 to 100, and write personal DMs that show clear buying intent.”

One clear role.
Zero guesswork.

Step 2: Build workflows, not one-offs

I do not re-explain things every day.

I built 3 base workflows:
→ Signal capture: find warm leads from posts, comments, job changes
→ Lead scoring: give each lead a 0–100 score
→ Message writing: write DMs based on the exact signal

Same steps.
Same logic.
Different accounts.

Step 3: Give it memory

Claude needs context.

I store a simple file with:
→ ICP and segments
→ Value prop and offers
→ Tone and style
→ Past winning messages
→ Current campaigns

Claude reads this file before it works.

Step 4: Let it handle low-value work

I did a one-week audit of my time.

Tasks that did not need me:
→ Finding profiles
→ Researching signals
→ Drafting first messages
→ Scoring leads

All of that went to Claude.
I only handle review and replies.

Step 5: Refine weekly

Every Friday, I review:
→ What messages missed the mark
→ What signal logic felt off
→ What small prompt tweak would fix it

The model stays the same.
The system gets sharper.

Step 6: Scale what works

One solid workflow saved 2 hours/week.

So I added:
→ Reply handling
→ Meeting qualification
→ Simple follow-up rules

Now the stack runs most of top-of-funnel for me.

Before: 4 hours/day of manual LinkedIn prospecting.
After: 30 minutes/week reviewing Claude’s work.

Want the exact setup?

Comment SETUP and I will send you:
→ The full 6-step Claude SDR system
→ 5 copy-paste prompts for signals, scoring, and DMs
→ Context file template
→ Weekly refinement checklist

P.S. If you ship this inside your GTM, your outbound operation will not look the same in 30 days.

Over the past 12 months, I've seen AI change three things fundamentally in sales development:

1. Research is no longer a task — it's instant context. What used to take 20 minutes of pre-call prep now happens in seconds. The reps who win are the ones using that time to go deeper, not faster.

2. Personalisation at scale is real now. Not "Hi {first_name}" personalisation actual relevance, tied to a prospect's priorities, their market, their moment. The bar for what counts as a good outreach has risen permanently.

3. The bottleneck has moved from activity to judgement. Volume was never the edge knowing who to prioritise, what to say, and when to push has always been where the best SDRs separated themselves. AI just makes that more visible.

What I keep telling my teams: the reps who embrace this shift will outperform what was possible two years ago. The ones who don't will be replaced not by AI, but by the reps who do.

Curious what you're seeing on the ground. Has AI actually changed how your pipeline gets built, or is it still mostly hype where you are?