What I wrote down
Every piece here started as something that cost me money to find out. Grouped by what you are trying to get done.
Find data
8 pieces
- Clay alternatives: what I moved to, and the one number that decided it
I ran Clay, then took it off this site. Here is the published pricing of both, the part nobody compares honestly, and what a contact actually costs me now.
- Prospeo review: what a mobile really costs, and what the directories got wrong
Eleven credits for a mobile and the email that comes with it. Here is the published price, the part of it that contradicts itself, and what two years in a production waterfall look like.
- Airscale review: what an email and a mobile really cost us, and the two settings that decide it
A waterfall you do not have to assemble and credits that do not expire, run at under a cent an email. Two settings decide whether you pay that or a third more, and both are ours to get right.
- When filters run out: targeting by resemblance instead of by criteria
Every prospecting database asks you to describe your market. The description is a guess. Here is the alternative, and where it stops working.
- Count before you buy: the free step nobody takes before paying for a list
Counting an audience is free at several providers. Almost nobody does it, and it is where most of the money is lost in prospecting.
- Scraping a market twice: the overlap that eats a third of a data budget
Two searches that look different can return the same people. You pay for both. Here is how that happens and how to stop it.
- Waterfall enrichment, explained by what it costs: which provider calls first, and why the order is the whole game
Every enrichment tool now says waterfall. The word describes an order of operations, and getting that order wrong is the most expensive mistake in prospecting data.
- Prospeo vs Icypeas: the mobile or the verification
Two providers of the same shape, and they are not in competition. One finds the mobile, the other decides what reaches the sequencer.
2 pieces
- Choosing a cold email platform: the four questions that decide it, and the three that do not
Every sequencer demo shows you the sequence builder. The sequence builder is not where campaigns fail.
- Staying out of spam: the infrastructure decisions that are made before the first email
Deliverability is decided by choices made weeks before a campaign launches. None of them are about the copy.
5 pieces
- LinkedIn outreach with more than one account: what changes, and what breaks
One account is a person sending messages. Ten accounts is infrastructure, and almost nothing about the first situation prepares you for the second.
- Why a signal outperforms a list, and the three signals worth wiring first
The same message sent to the same person converts differently depending on one thing: whether something just happened.
- Rent the account or risk your own: what a restricted profile actually costs
A LinkedIn restriction is not a warning, it is a door closing on a network you cannot rebuild. Renting turns that risk into a monthly line.
- Build or buy: when a messaging API beats an outreach platform
Most teams should buy the finished tool. The exceptions are specific, and if you are one of them the maths is not close.
- GetSales vs ReactIn: the fleet or the signal
One is built to run many LinkedIn accounts as infrastructure. The other is built to catch people at the moment something happened.
Phone
3 pieces
- The best hours to call, measured on four thousand calls
The morning returned 1.85 times what the afternoon did. Everything else about the dialler matters less than that ratio.
- Parallel dialling, in numbers: when five lines pay for themselves
Two hundred euros a seat sounds absurd until you count conversations per hour instead of licences per month.
- The call archive nobody opens, and the three questions that make it worth paying for
Recording every call is easy and nearly worthless. What makes it pay is asking the same question of every one of them.
Run the business
2 pieces
- One workspace per client: what changes when the CRM stops being shared
An agency running every client in one pipeline is one filter away from a data breach, and one export away from a contract problem.
- Qualify and book on one page: the second click that costs you meetings
A form and a calendar in two places is two drop-off points. Merging them is the cheapest conversion win available.
Create
6 pieces
- Record once, publish the same day: dropping the editing step on purpose
The reason your team stopped making videos is not the recording. It is the two hours afterwards that nobody has.
- Local recording: the only insurance against a conversation you cannot have twice
Every video call tool degrades with the network. The whole point of a recording platform is that the file does not.
- From screenshot to link in one gesture: the cheapest speed-up on a Mac
Thirty-five dollars once, for a thing you do forty times a day. The arithmetic is not the interesting part.
- Dictation that finally works: what changed, and what it is still bad at
Speaking has always been three times faster than typing. The reason nobody dictated was that it got the names wrong.
- Clipboard history is not a productivity hack, it is a missing feature
The computer remembers one thing at a time. Thirty dollars a year fixes a defect that has been there for forty years.
- Tella vs Riverside: edited on the way out, or protected on the way in
One removes the editing step. The other protects a recording you cannot make twice. The choice is decided by whether someone else is in the room.