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Notes from the floor.

What running outbound on other people’s markets has taught us. The signals, the cadence, the hiring question. Written to be useful whether or not you ever talk to us.

  1. The meetings2 min readBooked meetings that do not happen, and how to stop them.A no-show costs your closer an hour and the rep a relationship. What a good show rate looks like for B2B meetings, why meetings do not happen, and the five habits that keep them in the diary.Read →
  2. Prospecting2 min readMulti-threading: one account, more than one conversation.Most B2B decisions involve more than one person, and most outbound reaches one of them. How to work an account through two or three people without spamming the building.Read →
  3. The rules3 min readIs B2B cold calling legal in the UK? The 2026 rules, plainly.Yes, with conditions - and since February 2026 the fine for getting them wrong matches UK GDPR. What the rules say about calling and emailing businesses, who counts as a business, and what a compliant outbound team actually does.Read →
  4. Choosing a provider3 min readThe outsourced SDR contract: ten things to check before you sign.Most disappointing outsourced SDR engagements were disappointing on paper first. The clauses that decide what you get, what you keep and how you leave, in the order to read them.Read →
  5. Partner channels2 min readBuilding a B2B partner channel when you have only ever sold direct.A business that grew on consumer demand can add a second route to market: other businesses that already have the customers. How a Vietnam travel company built an international agency channel, and what carries over to any company selling through partners.Read →
  6. New categories2 min readSelling a category buyers cannot name yet.When there is no budget line for what you sell, outbound has a different first job: getting the buyer to agree the problem is real. How that built $12m+ of pipeline for a GEO agency, and how to run it in any new category.Read →
  7. Selling to IT2 min readHow to get meetings with IT directors who ignore vendors for a living.IT directors and heads of IT field more vendor approaches than almost anyone. What got a Microsoft partner in front of IT leadership at established law, investment and private equity firms, and what we would tell anyone selling technology into the mid-market.Read →
  8. Finding the market2 min readUsing outbound to find product-market fit, not just to scale it.When a technical product could sell to five industries, the fastest way to find the right one is to ask real buyers in all five. How a deep-tech company went from an open question to £22.2m of enterprise pipeline.Read →
  9. The cost question3 min readOutsourced SDR pricing in the UK: retainer, pay-per-meeting and hybrid.Three ways outsourced sales development is priced, what the published UK ranges are, what each model pays a provider to do, and the one number worth comparing across all of them.Read →
  10. Definitions2 min readSDR as a service: what it is, what is in it, and when it fits.A sales development function you subscribe to rather than build: the reps, the manager, the data and the tools, run for you under your name. What that should include, how it differs from the alternatives, and the companies it suits.Read →
  11. The handover2 min readThe handover: what a closer should get with every meeting.Sales development works or fails at the handover. What should arrive with every booked meeting, how to keep it from turning into a no-show, and the feedback that makes the next one better.Read →
  12. Hiring3 min readSDR job description: a UK template you can use.A sales development representative job description for a UK B2B company, section by section, with the 2026 pay ranges, the numbers to put in it, and the parts most adverts leave out that the best candidates look for.Read →
  13. Expectations3 min readWhat to expect from an outsourced SDR in the first ninety days.Meetings in the first month, then the checkpoints at day sixty and ninety: what good looks like at each, the warning signs, and what you are asked to do. Written for the week before you sign, whoever you sign with.Read →
  14. LinkedIn4 min readLinkedIn outreach for B2B: what good looks like in 2026.Most LinkedIn outreach pitches in the connection request and follows up on a timer. Buyers have learned to ignore both. What a thread that gets a reply actually contains, what LinkedIn itself says about limits, and a worked example.Read →
  15. Measurement3 min readSDR metrics: what to measure, and what to ask a provider for.Dials, conversations, meetings booked, meetings held, pipeline. Which numbers tell you whether sales development is working, which ones only tell you it is busy, and the published benchmarks, with their caveats.Read →
  16. The phone3 min readThe B2B cold call: a structure, not a script.A script read aloud sounds read aloud. A structure lets a rep sound like themselves and still get to the point. The five parts of a cold call that books a meeting, what the call data says about openers, and when to ring.Read →
  17. Finance software4 min readSelling finance software to the people who own the numbers: what Metapraxis taught us.A Group FP&A Director already has a system, reports to the CFO, and has a reason to ignore every vendor who rings. What we learned taking a planning platform into group finance at large UK and US organisations, and what we would tell anyone about to sell to finance.Read →
  18. Property3 min readSelling to estate agents: three meetings a week in a market that gets called every day.Everybody sells to estate agents, the person who decides is out on valuations, and whoever answers is paid to protect the diary. What we learned keeping a diary at three meetings a week for a property publisher, and what we would tell anyone about to call a branch.Read →
  19. The cost question4 min readHow much does an SDR cost in the UK in 2026?Around £85,000 in the first year for one mid-level rep outside London, once the salary, the employer’s National Insurance, the pension, the recruiter, the tools and the management time are added up - and the first quarter of that buys almost nothing. Here is the arithmetic, line by line.Read →
  20. Definitions3 min readWhat is an outsourced SDR agency, and what should one include?An outsourced SDR agency employs and manages sales development reps who prospect your market under your name and hand qualified meetings to your closers. That is the definition. The useful part is what has to be inside it for the meetings to be worth having.Read →
  21. The comparison3 min readIn-house SDR or outsourced: which gets you to pipeline faster?The same twelve months, laid side by side. A hire takes a quarter to start and a quarter to become useful; a plugged-in function is dialling in week three. The honest comparison is not the cost, which is closer than people think, but the calendar.Read →
  22. The objection3 min readOnly 7 per cent say outsourced SDRs worked for them. Here is what the rest got wrong.SaaStr polled over a thousand SaaS leaders and 7 per cent said outsourced SDRs had really worked, with another quarter saying sort of. We run outsourced SDRs for a living, so we read that carefully. Most of the failures have the same six causes, and half of them are on the buyer’s side.Read →
  23. Definitions3 min readSDR, BDR, AE: who does what, and why the first two should not be the third.Three job titles that get used interchangeably and mean different things. Short definitions, how the UK tends to use them, and the reason the roles are split in the first place.Read →
  24. The cadence3 min readSix touches, three channels, one cadence.A sequence is not a list of emails with a wait between them. It is a call, an email and a LinkedIn touch working the same company on one timetable, each earning the next. Here is the one we start from, day by day, and why the later touches do most of the work.Read →
  25. Email3 min readThe cold email that gets a reply is shorter than you think.Written for one person, at the length that fits on a phone screen, with one ask and nothing to open. The rules we write to, and why the ones that break them are the ones that get deleted.Read →
  26. The phone3 min readWhy cold calling still works in the UK in 2026, and what has changed.The phone is the channel much outbound has quietly dropped, which is a large part of why it still works. What a cold call is for now, what it is not for, and how the call has changed around the research that precedes it.Read →
  27. Working together3 min readHow to brief an outsourced sales team so the first month is not wasted.Many of the engagements that fail were never briefed. An hour, one page and five questions are all it takes, and the board built from them is the difference between a campaign and a list. Here is the page.Read →
  28. The manager3 min readWhat an SDR manager actually does all day, and why it is included.A rep without a manager does not get better; they get habits. The manager is the part of an SDR engagement nobody puts on the spreadsheet and the part that decides month three. Here is the day.Read →
  29. Going live2 min readThree weeks to the first dial: what happens in each one.A new SDR takes an average of three months to ramp. An engagement with us takes three weeks to the first call, because the ramp already happened somewhere else. What each week contains, and what you will be asked for.Read →
  30. Choosing3 min readHow to choose an outsourced sales provider: twelve questions for the first call.Every provider says the same things on its website, including us. The difference shows up in the answers to specific questions. These are the twelve we would ask if we were buying, with the answer that should worry you next to each.Read →
  31. Healthcare5 min readSelling into NHS primary care from outside it: what GP Triage taught us.Primary care has no single buyer. The practice feels the problem, the network decides what its practices share, and the integrated care board sets the direction. What we learned taking an AI triage platform into all three, and what we would tell anyone about to try.Read →
  32. Agencies4 min readNew business for agencies: why the agency that sells everyone else struggles to sell itself.Agencies are built for pitching, not prospecting, and the reason is structural rather than a failing. What we learned running a sales development engine for a London product studio, and why the answer has to be able to change its mind.Read →
  33. AI SDRs5 min readAI SDRs: what they are good at, what they are not, and where the person still wins.Every outbound tool now sells an "AI SDR". Some of the claim is real and some of it is a mail merge with a new name. A fair account of what the software does well, what it does badly, and where the line between machine and person actually sits in 2026.Read →
  34. The argument3 min readProspecting is a different discipline to closing.Not a complaint about salespeople. The better they are at closing, the less sense it makes to spend their hours at the top of the funnel - and the reason is not effort, it is that the two jobs need different days.Read →
  35. Hiring3 min readHiring your first SDR is the slowest way to find out.On paper the junior hire is the cheap option. What is actually being bought is a long ramp, a tooling bill and a management job that lands on whoever is already busiest. Here is the arithmetic, and the cases where the hire is still right.Read →
  36. Intent data4 min readIntent signals: the ones worth calling on.An industry code tells you what a company is. It tells you nothing about what it is doing this month, which is the only thing that makes a cold call welcome. These are the signals we build a board from, and why.Read →

Fifteen minutes. No pitch.

If any of this describes your market, fifteen minutes on a call will tell you what outbound would return on it.

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