OK30: How to Build a High-Performing Outbound Team in 2026 (Elric Legloire on Cognism's Prospect Podcast)

Most outbound teams in 2026 have the same problem. Pipeline cost more, conversion dropped and addict bodies stopped working. The team that are still hitting numbers rebuilt the foundation. A few months ago, Let'si FAL invited me on the podcast of Cognizant to walk through what that rebuild looks like. We covered who to hire and when, how to define SAP so your reps can actually act on it and where AI fits in Outbound. Right now this is that the original recording is in French and what you are going to hear right now is an English dub generated with elevenlabs. Enjoy. If you are new here, I'm Eric, founder of Outbound kitchen. I help B2B SaaS team build and scale Outbound. And on this show we unpack how the best outbound teams are operating in 2026. Hello. Welcome to Prospect. I hope you're doing well. Today we are going to talk about how to successfully build a high performing outbound team. Everyone says today that outbound is dead. That's normal. We're in a context where pickup rates are plummeting and the number of opened emails are practically non existent. Prospects are oversolicited. So it makes you wonder if investing in outbound is still worthwhile. We see many companies that have notably laid off many AIs, but we also have signs that show that for some companies the opposite is happening. And that's precisely why I've invited Eric Leglois, who assists B2B SaaS businesses in significantly boosting their outbound results without needing to expand their team. His firm conviction is that by 2026 productivity will be the true multiplier, not simply recruitment. He works with SaaS companies ranging from 2 million to 50 million in ARR. So we are definitely talking about something substantial. And today he's going to share exactly what he's building with them. He already does this really well in his Outbound Kitchen newsletter and so today I'm going to ask him about how to build a high performing outbound team. How's it going, Eric? I'm good. And you? Leticia? Thanks for the invite. Oh, great. Actually, you've been here before, you're a regular. It's the second time. Yeah, this is the second time. But then again, it's understandable. There aren't actually that many people who are at least I consider you someone who is incredibly sharp on the subject of outbound, both from a very theoretical standpoint and also from a practical perspective. Because you coach teams, you do prospecting yourself, you manage, and at the same time you have a 360 degree vision. As for me, I really encourage you to go check out his content on LinkedIn because I truly believe it was some of the best content I've consumed in 2025. Seriously, thank you so much for that. Thank you very much. Starts right away with the observation I'm obliged to begin with that, the diagnosis, and so on. We hear everywhere that outbound marketing is dead. What is your answer to that question? Is it truly dead or is it simply more challenging? It's not entirely over, but it has certainly become much more challenging now. And actually, for me, the problem is that everything on LinkedIn isn't always truly the reality, because depending on the person telling you what's happening in the market generally, it can actually mean several things about what they're sharing. But for me, there are two categories of people who share on LinkedIn generally who say, oh, cold calling is dead. Oh, AI is replacing AIs. Generally these kinds of people, they're selling a different solution. There's something else hidden behind it. They're just riding the current trend of they probably have a few clients for whom cold calling simply doesn't work, so they're offering an emailing solution instead of what do you expect? They're certainly not going to tell you otherwise. That's one point. And second after that there are, I'd say for me, there are two individuals I often see on LinkedIn who share a lot of content about essentially saying that the SDR role is completely dead and everything. I'm specifically thinking of Jason Lemkin from Sastor and Adam Robinson from RB2B, who, in my opinion, actually it's a bit, I think, restricted in the sense that Adam Robinson, he's there to maximize his profit and his turnover based on the number of employees. He's not at all focused on this idea of scaling with a larger team or anything. So what he does at his own level, he actually handles outbound, but without any SDRs. So that's precisely what they are doing today. And then you have Jason Lemkin, who I heard on a podcast recently where he was saying that actually, since his business is a media company, not a SaaS, he's struggling to recruit in San Francisco. So what have they done today? They've implemented a lot of AI to replace the SDR role. I think we need to really pay attention to what people are saying because if someone like SDRs is having trouble recruiting and they say it's not working for them, I think that it's not just because it's not working for them, that it won't work for other people. And then I really observe a lot of the top companies actually that are very good at go to market strategies and more specifically outbound sales. Because to have that kind of success today, I've moved on to my own business now, but previously I was working for SaaS companies full time. Now I'm working with several different SaaS companies at the same time. And for me, actually I've seen the evolution since I started. It's harder for sure, but it's not dead actually. It takes much more effort, more quality, more expertise, we could say, to get results. Actually we could say today and this I would say is an observational, it's not just my personal opinion. I'm seeing what the top companies are doing and these top companies, they're recruiting more and more sdr. So it's. Exactly, we'll talk about it. That's why I wanted to invite you, obviously. Exactly. We'll discuss that. What do you observe in the field? What has truly changed, in fact in practice, basically, if we're just talking about prospecting and not about recruiting, what happens with prospecting? And these are stats I'm getting from Jocko's book, the CEO of Winning by Design. They have the stats because I admit I don't have those myself and I like I'm going to start tracking this. But the statistics on prospecting in 2015 you'd send 100 emails and, and you'd get one opportunity. So the conversion rate was 1%. In 2018 it took 200 emails to get one opportunity. And in 2023 it was a thousand emails just to get one opportunity. So basically your conversion rate is really going down. And also if we talk about salaries because just for SDRs and we could also talk about doing some automation. But anyway, if we talk about SDR salaries, SDR salaries just in the US they've doubled between 2015 and 2023. That means your conversion rate goes down, your employees salaries increase, so your cost per meeting is actually rising. The observation is that the pipeline is becoming more expensive and unfortunately you can no longer afford to just let things in fact run their course. So it's more challenging, but it's not over. Okay, that's interesting to say. It's also perhaps a psychological thing for people to think it was one of the cheapest channels that existed and that then people are like, well actually it doesn't work anymore because now you have to put money into it, a lot of money. So there's that too. There's the cold call aspect where we're seeing the pickup rates that are truly catastrophic. I actually had like by the end of 2025, the US was at 5% and in France we were at 15. Honestly, from the following live co co sessions by sales reps, I realized we're not at 15%. I think we're below that in France. It obviously depends on but I feel it's dropped a lot by year end. So in my opinion that figure is actually lower. What today explains this decline. And it's not just about cold calling. I think it's actually across all channels. In fact, it's a bit like what happened in the advertising market, actually. You have too many solicitations and so what happens is that you have prospects who respond less to your emails, in fact, and if on top of that your emails or your calls aren't good, then actually people will just ignore them. It's a saturation really of the channels. And what's more, since there's AI and since you have a lot of. You have more and more prospecting agencies, it's actually, it doesn't surprise me that it all reduces. And if we're talking specifically about phones, the number of calls and it's not even sales calls, it's just spam that you receive, it's enormous. So basically people don't answer their phones as much because of that. And it's the same for emails. In fact, it's when you receive. I don't know how many prospecting emails you receive each day, but I receive. I'm not. I'm all alone and I get maybe three or four a day and I very rarely get good ones after a while, even though I am, I'm very passionate about the whole idea of prospecting. I rarely ever reply. I only reply to SDRs and I give them some feedback if they are SDRs, because I've worked with a lot of SDRs, but that's all there is to it. I don't reply to others. That's. Yeah, that's exactly what I do too. When I see it's an sdr, I always reply. But when I see it's an agency, you can just test. I sometimes send the message for the. Because I tell myself that perhaps the CEO will look at it and say, who are you accompanied by? We'll have to re challenge that. Okay, very well. So actually when we talked off the record we had discussed today, we all agree for those of you still with us, outbound isn't dead. So please keep listening about. So how exactly do we go about getting results? We discussed recruitment, specifically the fact that what no longer worked was actually hiring junior SDRs, which was a very common practice, especially in France. It used to be in the traditional sales career progression that you would start as an SDR and then eventually you might perhaps earn the privilege of closing deals one day. So we were giving him Sales Navigator and so on. And what exactly were we telling him? Why has this model today become unsustainable? If we're really talking about a company launching into outbound, it will actually depend on the profile of the people who are hired. If they're juniors. Actually, it's basically, for me, the real problem with this. It's not even just about the person's profile. It's what happens is that they actually delegate this to someone who has never done it before. Right from the start, it's not going well. And the second thing is that there's no one in charge. I don't know how you say it in French. Yes, it's an outbound manager, actually. And actually, if you think about it, if you give it to someone who's never done it, and on top of that, you leave them with a responsibility, you know very well it's not going to work. So just giving them tools and sending templates that used to work, that's what I did when I started. I didn't. It worked very well because that's how it was. But that was in 2017, 2018. So you see, that has changed. It's quite outdated now. So you can't really leave things like that anymore. I know that in France, and I'm not trying to bash French companies for this, but I knew some friends who were actually recruiting interns to do that. And don't expect to get miracle results if you're just starting out. Actually, it's. It works. Or rather just it doesn't now. Maybe before stuff, it worked, but not anymore. And for me, the biggest problem is giving this responsibility to someone who has never done it. Whereas for me, actually, when you're starting specifically, and we're not even talking about the stage where you already have results and can delegate more responsibilities to someone else, you need someone, whether it's. It depends on the size of your company, but whether it's the founder or the CEO or the head of sales, the person in charge, actually, and you work with someone who can have experience, but otherwise that simply won't work, you can't expect someone who's never done it to figure it out on their own and get results. It just doesn't work like that. In any case it's important. In any case, it's important to say and then we'll talk right after precisely about what type of profile for today's newcomers. But before that you already somewhat answered about. In fact, before we could get results with somewhat average messages and volume. Basically it's the fact that today we're more in a spam logic that makes people not respond. But there's a quite interesting statistic. You told me there's been over a 20% increase in SDRs globally in just one year. Yet what I've personally observed is widespread layoffs everywhere. How do you actually explain that there have been layoffs all over and at the same time these 20% percent growth, what does that really tell you? For me actually it shows that the market what on LinkedIn and what the reality actually is, when I was talking about observing, that's what I do. I look at what's happening globally and the number of SDRs is actually increasing. So for me that means one thing. Yes, perhaps there are companies that are letting go of their SDRs because I think they haven't managed to make them work and for many different reasons. And it's not just what we were saying earlier about the role of junior SDRs, but for me I think that actually the sales team today is becoming more and more important in companies because depending on the sector, to cite a SaaS, there's something I've observed that's interesting. More and more companies that aren't SaaS actually have SDR teams and I have banks on the list. How should I put it? I found a bank for instance in India with 450 SDRs, something like that. I'd never seen anything like it. I was like, okay, interesting. There's T Mobile, I think it's a German company who apparently they have 300 and something SDRs. And these aren't SaaS sectors. It's really. So there's that. And for me I think it's mainly that they understand, well when they understand that it can, that it can actually work, that it's a competitive advantage to have a team with SDRs or even full cycle AI, not just SDRs, because if you think about quite traditional markets, in fact most companies they just wait for their clients to arrive. Whereas when you have a team that's doing prospecting, you're actually proactive and you can contact all those companies that really fit into your icp. You get there before your competitors, even if it's not necessarily the right time, but at least you see you're more proactive than your competitors. And here, here's an example I have with one one of my clients. They are in a traditional market and they are the only ones doing prospecting. They might have five, six competitors. They only do marketing. And that's where it stops. And there's that. The second thing I can even give you this. These are stats. It's a VC firm, it's venture capital and private equity. Inside partners, I don't know if you know them. There's Jeremy Donovan who was at Salesloft who is with this firm now, who shared some stats from their portfolio. And over the last 211 of the past few years, basically they interviewed 150 companies. And the top companies on the go to market side, which we're not talking about the others, they invested heavily in their SDR team and they recruited even more people. So for me I believe there are actually two main things. Firstly, most companies that are doing layoffs haven't successfully managed to make their business model function. So that's one aspect of it. And secondly, companies that really excel at go to market strategies and truly understand the market dynamics, they're investing heavily in it because they know for a fact that it truly works. You are giving examples of companies like Ramp Snowflake for those who might want to have some. These are big players. But it's important to realize that often we tend to think that companies that are super shiny, they've moved on to something else. They've moved on to SDR with AI and that's it. And it's interesting to realize that no companies that are today growth leaders are companies that actually continue to invest massively in innovation. Yes, oh yes. And because what's more, if we're talking about Snowflake, they are directly against Amazon with AWS and the Redshift platform and against Google with BigQuery. So they, they're up against giants so they can't afford not to. They have to invest in their go to market because a Snowflake next to an Amazon or a Google, that's complicated. And now on top of that they also have databricks who just surpass them in terms of revenue and company size. So there's that rippling. They're operating in a human resources market that is incredibly competitive. So you simply cannot be in a market like that and not have a truly top tier. It's and even, I mean it's in what I was telling you about the company analysis actually the sector where I've seen the most SDRs, it's really the HR teams, sorry, the HR products. That's where most of the investments in hotband are because it's a super competitive market. That's where I had my company. And I guess that doesn't surprise me then. Okay, all right. Anyway, I find that super interesting, especially for our listeners to realize that actually today you have to follow those with good growth. And what I'm noticing in what you're telling us is all those who actually laid off stuff or all those who tried to replace them, because that also happened. There are people who bet everything on AI and they're going to rehire their SDRs later on. That's a real thing. So all of that tells us that ultimately it's not the problem of the hot band. Does it work or not? The real problem is do you know how to do it or not? And that's precisely what we're going to discuss. How do you build a high performing team? So first we're going to discuss the people aspect because that's truly the foundation, particularly the issue of recruitment. We've already touched upon the junior versus experience profile. Of course there will always be juniors, but experienced individuals are scarce. Especially here in France. There's a reputation actually when you start to, I know that because it's happened to me to sometimes keep doing prospecting and you get this look from people like, wow, you shouldn't be doing that anymore. That's it. So you have something that really complicates things for people who would want to keep doing that, except they don't realize that you have a real expertise at some point at a certain stage. How do you arbitrate between junior and experienced when you're building a team or when you decide to build a team or help build a team, it actually depends on the stage they are at with outbound. And when I say outbound, because I want to be clear, it's. I'm not just talking about prospecting, I'm really talking about the maturity of the team, the processes and the tools they have in place. For me, it's most people, they actually reduce outbound to just prospecting. And yes, prospecting is the process, but actually there are many other things involved. And especially if you recruit people, it adds even more complexity to the topic. If you actually, for me, you generally have several stages. You have, you have the. When you want to start, it's either they already have a sales team and they relied on inbound, or actually, if it's a product if they have a plg, PLG funnel. And sometimes actually it starts with the founder wanting to begin recruiting and we move to an outbound strategy. And if we start with outbound, we haven't seen any results. In my opinion, we can't really recruit juniors at that stage yet because it's quite complex, as we were discussing earlier. And actually there are a lot of question marks still about the icp because even if the company says they know what their ICP is, it's usually still quite messy. So that's something that needs to be worked on. How can I put it? You need to implement a lot of things actually. The tools actually, they're not usually in place. So maybe you need to know how to do all that. You can't just hire someone, in fact, who's going to do all that and also make their results work because you have to set all that up, plus schedule appointments. We absolutely have to do it. Yeah, yeah. And get results because. And there's that. So if you take someone junior with no experience first in prospecting, who has to learn all that and also no experience in your market. Because we haven't even talked about Personas or the industry you work in. Because if we're talking about cybersecurity, for example, the person trying to call a CISO a security director without experience, that would be funny. That would be complicated for me. Actually. The initial stage, when you're starting out, you really need someone who already has some experience to actually speed up the prospecting phase, who will also learn the Persona. Perhaps if they've never done it before. Because you shouldn't be overly demanding about. Because if you want an SDR who has already prospected for your Persona, I think it's faster for them to learn the new Persona than to learn prospecting. The experience of prospecting, there's that. Juniors, yes, you can recruit them, but only when you're already at a stage where you're getting results, actually. And when I say results, I'm talking about revenue. I'm not just talking about get about getting appointments. It's. And here we're talking about. It can take, depending on your average basket and your sales cycle, it can take from six to 18 months to see results. We're not just talking about starting and having results in two months. Yeah, that's interesting because you see, I know typically you might have companies that say, okay, we've tried, I don't know, cold calling. Quickly we realized it was getting traction. But then you realize that when you. You work with them a bit more closely, it's not working at all anymore, or that's it. So it's quite interesting to consider when you say it's working, there's revenue, they're already getting results. Does that imply there's already a playbook, a well formalized one that allows us to understand how appointments are being set at what frequency for each channel and what the specific objectives are. So what are the objectives we're aiming for? Is this we are just to hire a junior? No, because we're seeing it through. Or in fact, even if we book appointments and convert them, we think there's something we can do. We just need to put some structure in place and it could work. So to formalize, I think the playbook will never be finished anyway. It's something that constantly improves. But I think the indicator you can use to know when it's a good time to start bringing in people and perhaps recruiting less experienced individuals is when your first or second hire can achieve the same results over three months, at least, approximately so much. So we're talking about this, and I'm certainly not talking about just one or two appointments, of course. I'm talking about the fact that if your theory is that they can take 10 to 12 appointments per month, and then again, I believe it depends on the market. And if you're in France, that really depends on a lot of other criteria. But if we say. If I say that when this person is productive, they take 12 appointments and that over the last three months they've taken 12 appointments on average, then you know you're starting to have a play, a playbook, a process that can be repeated with other people. That's one thing. 12 meetings a month, is that the maximum this person can manage? Yes or no. And that's. I think that's. You were just talking about productivity earlier. And for me, nowadays, what I often work on with companies is before recruiting an extra person, because actually, if we're talking about salary, hiring really costs much more than increasing the results of someone who's already in place. Are 12 meetings the absolute maximum that this person can handle? And generally the answer is no, it's not 12. That's your objective, which you gave him. But realistically, with everything that's been put in place today, or the tools that are available, or even in terms of the processes, what you can actually implement? There are companies like ONR in the US that manage to get 40 appointments per month per BDR and they have a closing rate of 25%. And they're generating between 70 and 80k in sourced revenue per BDR per month. And that's huge for a team. So I'm not saying everyone can do that because even the companies I work with were not at those levels. But for them it's a super, super high level. But it's just to show what can be done. Wow, that's incredible. So I really thank you for this data because it really underscores the fact that when you do things well, it works well. My impression is that also for the SDR team to function, you need the right manager in charge. There are companies where it's not systematic to have a head of sdr. I don't really see thousands of them, to be honest. I often see the head of sales managing both the account executives and also the SDRs. I'm really speaking more about companies because those that are a bit more advanced, mid market firms or large SMEs and so on. And so the question I'm going to put to you is this. Sometimes it's even completely handled by the rev ops department. So there you have it. That's the situation. So for you, what exactly would be the optimal model? Is it absolutely necessary to have a head of SDR who is actually solely responsible for this specific task? Because closing and prospecting are after all, quite distinct subjects. So what is the model that you are recommending? Of course it's going to depend on the size of your team, right? Because would you really hire a head of SDR for just two SDRs? Probably not. Actually the real issue here, it's not just about what the best model is, it's more about whether you actually have internal expertise on the subject. That's really what it comes down to. And we were discussing, I was speaking with ONR, the CRO of honor. He's a former director of SDRs. He managed 50 STRs. And he mentioned to me that he had purchased. He was actually one of the very first purchases of Salesloft when it was initially launched. This was really back then when it. I don't even know how old Salesloft is, but to give you some context, it's not. It's already quite old and it's one of Salesloft's very first clients. And he's someone who we could say invests a lot in his teams and everything, but he's a CRO who has a strong outbound background. Actually, he's not. He's not just a CRO who came through. He also held AE roles, I believe. But he truly understands Outbound. And he very quickly grasped everything that needs to be put in place. For me, he's really more someone who has that expertise. So it could be the head of sales, of course, but it could also be a head of SDR as well. It's the person who should, for me, someone who understands the role very well, actually, who should manage that. And it's not necessarily the head of sdr. Okay, that's excellent. So we'll move beyond the people aspect to the tools part, because it's very much in vogue, everything concerning processes and orchestration. I've talked about it quite a bit here that the main subject for businesses was still largely orchestration. Okay, we have a lot of tools, we have AI and so on. We have so many possibilities. But what do we choose? How do we choose? You really emphasize a precise order even before we discuss tools. So apologies to those who will say, not again, but we're going to talk about icp. But yes, exactly. But that's where it all begins, because it's. That's where it truly starts. Why do so many companies do the opposite? Exactly why do you think many companies do the opposite precisely, of not starting to tell themselves? Okay, I'll spend maybe two months. I know this because right now I'm helping a company with closing to find their first clients, and I have to fight to try to tell them, wait, let's spend a month just to figure out who we should target. And, and actually, you get the feeling people want to quickly skip this part. They go too fast, and six months, a year later, we realize it wasn't the method, it wasn't the tools, it wasn't using email, LinkedIn or the phone that failed. It was fundamentally a gap in this strategy. Why do companies do the opposite? Because they don't know that it's. It's important, actually. And they don't really understand the impact that it has on the rest of the pipeline and the entire sales cycle, actually. Because if you're not speaking with the right company in reality, even if you have them in the pipeline, it's completely useless, actually, it's. And I can give you a very simple example, but it's. If you consider your. If we're talking, and here we're not discussing the exact details of what your Tier 1 or your Tier 2 is. If you're Tier 1, you have a 25% closing rate, and your Tier 2, you have 5. You can try to schedule a lot of meetings with tier 2 companies, but in the end you only have a 5% win rate or closing rate with those companies you can have plenty of them, but actually to compensate for the rate that's five times lower than the other, you'll need a lot of pipeline to make up for it. So for me it's just a matter of them not really understanding the full impact it actually has on the rest of the pipeline, quite simply. And it's just that they don't actually know, that's all. I don't really have any other explanation. They think it's not important when it's actually the very foundation of everything. We are not just talking about prospecting or up demand, it's really about marketing. We're talking about the efforts that can be invested everywhere in the go to market strategy. Okay, and so how exactly do you usually go about helping a company or more specifically a team to define its ICP and its target Personas? Yeah, because people feel like we don't know what the method is. It really depends a lot on the size of your team already. Because if I'm starting, I won't tell you. That's not the same answer. But basically if you're starting with a company, your account list should already be 500 to a thousand companies, roughly. It's not, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't be a million businesses. You see already if you start off wrong, really. So if you start, really, I think you should work with hypothesis. I can't tell you what the right answer will be or not. But for me, really when you start, you need to think more in terms of. Sorry, sorry for the English terms and because I don't have the word for it in French, early adopters, companies that like new technologies, for example, because you have companies unfortunately who will never buy new technologies. So that's the first criterion to use. And I can give you examples. I worked for a company selling two major accounts in France and abroad. And actually it's not because a company is a major account that it's necessarily a good company to contact. We were selling a technical solution to data managers, the people who are in charge of data. And a very simple example would be what specific data solution they're currently using and do they happen to use Oracle. Oracle, which is a physical solution, meaning they have actual installations, they have their own server located right there within the company. And then on the other hand you have solutions like snowflake databricks or the ones I was just talking about earlier, which are cloud based and are more advanced solutions. You just, it's quite simple, you focus on that and Actually, that already takes care of 80% of the market because it actually tells you which companies are more advanced than others already. And here we're just talking about data managers. And you can do the same thing for sales teams if you want. Does the team like use outreach or sales loft tools? Okay, but then again, salesloft and outreach aren't necessarily new tech anymore. But for me it's always like this. It's about considering if the company you're talking to has already bought new solutions in the last five years, for example, and you have many ways to find that out today. Already knows that that's when you're just starting out. Because later, if you already have clients and so on. It's not quite the same strategy. I'd say first you really need to analyze your clients, analyze the calls that you've already had, why they made the purchase, and then actually it's first to well, find similar clients. But for me, nowadays when it comes to finding similar clients, it's much quicker than it was a few years ago. I'd say it's about trying to understand what their commonalities are. And I'm not talking about their industry sector or the company size generally, which is very basic, I'd say. And we can talk about. I'll get back to this stack, what they are using in their stack. For example, in their sales team, do they have SDRs, for example? That could be one thing. Do they have on their. On their website, what kind of marketing technology are they using? There are many different points you can use to determine is this a company we want to contact or not. So there you have it. For example, most companies I talk to, they just use the industry sector or the size of the company. Companies like Snowflake, which is very advanced for me, they are the most advanced on this topic. They have 140 data points to determine what fits into the ICP. Wow. And we're talking. Yeah, exactly. Even with my clients, we don't have that many. Usually 10 to 15, no more. Because it's already quite. I'm not saying it's complex. Personally, there was one of my Personas that I really just played to death. I really ran it into the ground. My. I think I was. Yeah. At 10. 10 features, maybe 15 max. 140. That's already good. Not really. That's good. That means you did a. You did an insane amount of work on the data. Actually it allows us to be able to do this. That link precisely by saying that it's good because you gave us the two, two, two levels for his icp. Two extremes. But basically I like it because you talked about when we have clients, because a lot of people listening to this podcast already have quite a few clients. And actually the quick thing you can do is just say to yourself, I'll look at the customers and keep three or four characteristics for them. And right there you're showing that it's not enough. At what point do the signals we call intent and so on actually become useful, really? Well, when you have all that in place. Really, when you have all that in place. Because for me, the signals, if it tells you that there's a company on your site that doesn't fit your icp, you shouldn't even contact them, for example, because it's. If we go back to the subject of just thinking about your closing rate in relation to that, why are you contacting them? Just because they're on your site doesn't mean you should reach out. It's just noise, really. So for me, the ICP actually allows you to target effectively and to make sure that one, your SDRs or your AES are spending time on accounts that will close. And it's simple. But we're not even just talking about your appointment setting right here. Because yes, you can book appointments with companies that aren't in your icp, but it's a waste of time for your SDR and your ae in the end. I actually have a question about that. In fact, in reality, generally, we take, say we have the year 2026, we have an outbound team. They have. Actually, we bring the team in globally. They have a number of targets that can range from. It depends on your time, but it can go from 200, 300, 400, 1000, 1500, and so on. You're in more American markets, so we're looking at perhaps slightly higher volumes today, given that people are saying sales cycles are getting much longer. How do you see this distribution? There's always that question of when, how you build your batches. You have your first batch of companies that you dispatch. How do you go about enriching it quickly without people forgetting the first list? Do you have any tips for that? I am asking this on purpose because historically I have always wanted the team to reach their goal of 400 ICP accounts come rain or shine. I really do not want them to be distracted by any other outside matters. But at the same time, there's also an exercise that is. That can be a trap, because you might have a better icp, for example, that you haven't Necessarily identified, when I say a better one, something that has changed in your market, which means you might have another opportunity. How do you actually manage this complexity? Yeah, it's, it's the icp. It's not defined actually, it's evolving. So first off, that's the first thing and same thing for your market size because actually. But that won't be defined by the sales team actually that's really more defined by strategy. So it's either the founders or the CEO. Well, and the execs, plus the product side actually. Because basically I can give concrete examples because I know we worked on this a lot at Chili Pepper and we only sold to SAS companies that used Salesforce. As a result. It narrows down the list of accounts that we could work on if we wanted to increase the size. Sorry, we were working with SaaS, companies that had go to market teams and were on Salesforce. So those are three minimum criteria, let's say. And we're not even talking about ICP criteria here. That was just the minimum criteria. We needed to be able to sell to them. If we wanted to sell to more companies, what did we need to do? It was at the product level actually. We had to make some changes to the product. So one, it was integrations with other CRMs. The integration we added was HubSpot. So what that means is we didn't just have Salesforce anymore, now we could use. Yeah, so that makes. We shared a study with Economism, with Charlotte on the number of people using Salesforce and HubSpot. And I think that that multiplied. You must have increased by 10 actually in terms of pal of TAM size all of a sudden. Yeah. In the US you'll be surprised, but in the US let's say maybe 95% of companies that are fairly advanced SaaS. It's Salesforce, the CRM. Yeah, that's true. It's true that it's a bit the opposite of what it is in France. It's more HubSpot. On the other hand, it's the CAC 40 that's much more on Salesforce. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Actually also in my experience, if you're selling to a go to market team, you will find that most companies have used Salesforce and HubSpot. Then there were other markets, not necessarily SaaS. But you think about more indus. More traditional sectors. Sorry, it was more Microsoft Dynamics. You had pipedrive too. But it wasn't. Anyway, it didn't fit into our. Even if we were interested, it didn't fit your icp. So we didn't develop those integrations, that is fine. Actually, for me, it's about how it evolves. First, there's the product side, but also staying close to your clients. It's not like we just define it and that's it. You really have to see what's happening with your client. In reality, for you, who should be doing it. Because in theory, I completely agree with you in. In. In practice, what I often see is either you have a sales director ahead of sales who's got a good head on their shoulders and says, hey, we could do some business here. And they're told, shut up. And then you have a fight with marketing and people say marketing and sales don't get along. Or actually, you don't have anyone in sales flagging it, and you have no one in marketing. And so as a result, you lose businesses. In a perfect, a great scenario, you've got a marketing guy who actually does his job positioning every year, who listens to your calls, who knows how to sell your product just as well as you do. And then you might have a shot. But let's be honest, that's 1% of companies. Maybe not in the US but in France at least. Yeah. To answer that, it's the same as before. Regarding who handles that in the team, who is it? It's the person who understands the subject best. It could be the founder or the head of sales. For me, I think it's a rather, well, rather complex subject, actually, because it's not just. Can't RevOps work on that? No, but actually I'm doing this on purpose. Sorry to the listeners, etc. But the point is, I think these organizational questions are super important, especially in a lot of companies where there are tons of SDRs, tons of AES, there are RevOps, sometimes there are five RevOps in one company, etc. Actually, there's never anyone who's really responsible for anything. On these topics. We should be asking ourselves who is responsible for the ICP in every company. We should know who is responsible for ensuring our ICP is up to date. I'm asking you about RevOps on purpose. For me, it's not. It's the same thing. It's actually about who understands the subject better rather than whether it's the RevOps team that should be doing it. Because I can give you an example. Just on Friday, I was talking to a company with 400 million in ARR and so annual recurring revenue. And it's the SDR director for Europe that I'm talking to. So for now, it's the first call. It's not Revops that's discussing this. And here the topic is, we're very strong in the tech SaaS market. We're targeting new markets now. We'll assess potential in traditional sectors. For me, actually, it's more a question of who understands. And it's not. I don't think the subject is something we should. We shouldn't just overlook it. But when you're on like pretty advanced teams, actually, what happens is usually you have the core team that works on the main icp and actually you'll have teams that are more that are there to experiment. Like at the beginning of a SaaS. Actually, usually the AES, I don't know. Usually. I'm not saying it's always like that. But when AES first start, they aren't paid on commission. They're paid a base salary. They don't get commission. Why? Because since we don't really know what the ICP is yet, the product isn't developed enough to really grasp a lot of things. And it's pretty much the same thing here. You've got a team that's there more to experiment with new ic, how should I put it? Industrial sectors that might be worth pursuing. And it's mostly just hypotheses really, because there's a difference between hypothesis and reality. You don't really know until you start taking meetings with them. Because generally when you're entering a new market, your closing rate is much lower. You don't have client case studies in that sector and there are many things like that. Okay, anyway, that was really interesting. We spent a long time on the icp, but I really think it's important. It's interesting that you're checking if we're aligned on this because when we talk about icp, everyone says, yeah, it's obvious because it's the foundation. It's like having an offer and a value proposition. When you dig deeper and you have to pick up the phone and call and you ask the question, what's your value proposition? Should see, you realize that if you say that on the phone, it's not going to work. So you see, these are really things you have to be very precise about. And to give you a concrete example, because what I don't like about ICP is when people tell me, yes, you need to be more specific. But for example, if you're selling well, like we were at chili peppers, two SaaS companies, that's too broad. Actually, it's not. It's a sector, but it's too Broad is the company. Are they bootstrapped? So that's one thing. Already we have the finance side. Do they have VCs? Are these companies currently owned by private equity firms? The three of them are dealing with very different sets of issues. And that is exactly where it all really starts. The size of the sales team, because do they have five SDRs, 200 SDRs? The complexity, the maturity of the team will be different. Are they remote or are they in offices? How many offices do they have? And there's that. What's their Persona? Because that you can. You've got cybersecurity, hr, finance, go to market, you've got tons of sub segments. Do they target SMBs? Mid market or enterprise? It's the same principle that adds more criteria. Doing so creates sub segments. You should consider at that point, you have, I don't know how many SaaS companies exist globally, but for Chili Pepper, 10,000 fit our criteria. 10,000 is too many. It's not segmented enough. So this actually lets you create plenty of subsegments and that's when you really start talking about a more defined icp, let's say. Super interesting. Anyway, it's very clear because it's well illustrated. I'd like to move on to the next part. We're staying on the process orchestration part. We'll try to speed things up a bit. But I'm taking the opportunity to ask Elric quite a few questions. While I have him here, I'd like to talk about multichannel. Honestly, today I find that in France, people aren't really doing true multichannel. They're doing a sort of disguised multichannel where they use email to say, we're here, you've seen us, and then you make a call. Well, anyway, what I find problematic isn't multichannel. You're saying that all channels work today, whether it's course, email, LinkedIn, but that you shouldn't really rely on just one anymore. But actually, for me. Okay, I'm with you on that. But to what intensity? Wait, hold on. No, I'm smiling because I was thinking about how I was going to answer. It also depends on where you're at with your team, because if you have someone who's really good at cold calling, you're not going to. You're not going to have them send emails. There are a lot of nuances to the answer. If you're starting out and your hire is great at cold calling, you shouldn't have them sending emails. It's. We're not going to do that. If we're more advanced. Yes, we'll do multi channel and on the other hand it's, there's, we're putting a lot of things in place to help them because generally SDRs, they're good at. Some are better at certain channels than others. The frequency actually, it depends a lot actually on are you doing prospecting for SMBs or are you doing enterprise? Because for me the answer is going to be completely different. Yeah, totally. But because of the key accounts. Yeah, that's right. It's important that you give a little of yourself today. I'm the one who's going to guide you. For example, actually we're going to take, we're going to take a company, we're going to take a fairly advanced company. Okay. There are SDRs and so on. They mainly target, let's say mid market enterprise companies. That doesn't mean the same thing in every country, but basically it gives you an idea. We're really talking about large corporations. I'd rather set small business aside because for most people listening to us today, the issue is knowing, okay, how do I manage to snag calls with people who can actually pay me more, especially during a bit of a crisis, you're not necessarily going to go after accounts with them. Less potential. You do multi channel, what do you do with those companies? What are you actually activating? What are you even activating in the first place? For instance, I had a client who relied solely on cold calling. We added a multi channel approach because while cold calling is effective, it is tough when your target market is very small, which is the case for them. Well, if you have, let's say 30% of your prospects who are on LinkedIn but who have, sorry, 30% on Link, who are on LinkedIn and for 30% of those on LinkedIn, you have their phone number, but what do you do with the remaining 70%? You can't just do cold calling. There's that. We've actually added a process where we can reach out to any company whether we only have their LinkedIn, no email, no phone, or all three. Basically we've mixed it all together. But essentially the SDR handles the cold calling and the rest is sent out automatically for them. Okay, so that's the question I wanted to ask you. How do you orchestrate these channels a bit to maximize the chances of actually reaching a prospect? You already answered by saying, careful, look at the type of profile you have. Don't have them doing emails or appointment setting on LinkedIn. If you guys are good at cold calling, but then how do you orchestrate it? Do you bring in people from the outside? Basically, do you get people who are really good? Actually, since your team is already ahead, you don't necessarily need people who are good at everything. That's where you can bring in juniors because you already have the playbook in place and everything. So it's more about. We're really talking about coaching and training here. So you're upskilling them. So you can, You can set that up, you can set that. You can actually upskill them. Really. Clear. Still on that part. Actually more rather, we were talking, you were saying that for you, the most important thing, obviously it seems like an obvious thing, but not always when we receive, like you were saying, we receive the messages, the quality of the message. So you're saying that today what matters most beyond the icp, beyond everything else, is the quality of the message. What makes for a good message in 2026? Because we're all saying the same thing on LinkedIn. Add value, personalize, be relevant. All right, but guys, you really need to tell me more because it's complicated. Actually it stems from the icp and that's why I was telling you about the importance of the icp. Because if I go back to the example of chili pepper and we're selling to a company that sells to restaurants, for example, we're not going to have the same message as if we were selling to a company that does cybersecurity. Because actually they don't have the same challenges in terms of a company that sells to security directors. We know they're going to be more focused on the mid market and large accounts and that it's more complicated on that front. So your message needs to be adapted to their specific challenges, actually. Whereas with restaurants it's more about volume, it's SMBs. You have to. When you're on a team selling to SMBs, there's a lot of automation to implement. It's less message will actually depend on your icp. That's why it starts with. So from your point of view, the copywriting part is not really important. Yes, it is important, but actually it stems from your icp. It's what actually the message adapts to your. It should adapt to your ICP by app. And here we're just talking about the icp. We're not even talking about whether you saw that they have. We're not even talking about signals yet. We're just talking because you can send specific messages without having signals. Okay, so that's interesting. So you're in the camp that as long as your message is relevant, it doesn't need to be personalized with signals or extra stuff on the side. If you really have a handle on your client's pain points. It's always the same thing. We actually make use of the information we find online. And I am not talking about specific signals that might indicate they are having issues. For example, consider a company that sells to restaurants, just to keep it concrete rather than speaking in a SaaS that sells to restaurants. Actually, if they're selling to SMBs and we're really talking about people who aren't on LinkedIn or anything, they, they need volume actually because their average order value is going to be very low and the go to market challenges they have, it's a lot of volume. Their average deal size, if it's €10,000 in annual revenue, we know they're more about volume, more about a lot of automation. For the SMB segment, the go to market sales teams, they need a lot of automation. So you're going to focus more on how we can automate or help your team automate more things. Whereas for a team selling to enterprise accounts, automation isn't necessarily their primary concern. It's important, but yeah, exactly. Actually, I know the issue. We found a message for firms selling to major accounts. The fear of missing out on a deal because if you miss Google when they were on your site, it's not the same thing. Whereas for a company selling to an SME, if they miss a deal for an SME, it's not necessarily, it's not the same thing. That's why I was talking about nuance in that regard. And now if we're talking about signals. Yes, the signals, you can mention them in your message too, but. Okay, very clear. Actually that makes for a good segue, these signals. Because signals just means having quality data that allows having databases that go beyond sector or size. Which is what you were saying earlier. So that's going to be the last topic I wanted to cover with you. Tools and the stack. I don't necessarily want us to focus on specific tool names. Why? Because quite simply they could change tomorrow. We have tools that were the best of the best not even a year ago. Today they're going to disappear. Or at least they're much less famous in a way. Data first, that's what you're telling me. Meaning that today, in your view, we need to invest in quality data before we invest in tools. Today, how do we actually ensure the quality of the data? But more importantly, how much does it cost? I Know that for you, something. Yes, that is exactly right. You've quantified the cost of having. Sorry for the term crappy data. Yeah, that's the term. So how do you do it? Actually, unfortunately, you have no other choice but to test whether the data is true or not. And when I talk about data, I'm talking about data from several sources, because it's not just. It could be phones, for starters, it could be emails, it could be the information you have on companies, the signals, or for example, the last one, actually that I've tested a lot over the last six months, is what AI finds for you about the company and for me, quality, actually, it covers all those criteria. And so it could be the supplier, it could be the. Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot about the phones and the emails. If you have 100 people, for example, the tool you're using, how many phones do they have out of the hundred? If you're selling to a CFO, for example, if you have 100 CFOs on your list, how many phone numbers can your tool find for those hundred? And then there's the quality, because it's not just about the rate on the list, it's about how many phone numbers are still valid and still good. Sorry. Nowadays there are tools that let you validate that more quickly, but generally it's done. These are tests you run with your team. And for that there's no other solution than to have an SR or an AE who handles it and notes it down manually, telling you, oh, we called this number, it's good. And because there are actually a lot of people who think, who say, oh, yeah, what's the best tool? No, it's not what's the best tool? It's for my industry. What's the best tool? Always. We always come back to AI. We always come back to AI. And that's why today you have solutions. We said we weren't talking about tools, but they're market specific. For example, in the restaurant industry in the us you have tools just for restaurants to get the owner's phone number and other tools just won't find it for you. Some tools work much better when they are used in specific territories or countries. By the way, I really liked the point you made about being careful with your suppliers. Honestly, today I nearly blew a fuse when they started giving me data that came from perplexity. Now, I'm not criticizing the tool, mind you, but when someone makes sitemaps for me with a tool like this, and then you check both the sector and you do some real Cold calling. And you realize there's a huge gap between the two. That today actually I don't know if you've ever experienced that, if you've ever seen that. Actually nowadays people think that AI is tied to Google and so it's the truth. What's your take on that? It's the same. It's the test. I've done some tests and I've actually done those tests and now I haven't been able to do any since August. So since August 2025. But I was trying to track the evolution of perplexity models versus the others a bit every month to tell you which one I find high quality compared to the others. Perplexity was average. It wasn't at the bottom, nor was it at the top. I measured it by three criteria. It's to be an obstruction advantage of the Iceman mark using a process of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, we still examine the shear power processes and determine if it's true capable of discovering anything in substance. Multiple sources at once and not just 20 sources. Yeah, that's cool. But are they interesting sources? And the last one, did it hallucinate or not? Because like you were saying, you just told me something important, especially about AI, which is right now, AI is starting to get pretty good. I trust it more than I did six months ago. But before it hallucinated a lot. You had to be careful with that. Those were the three criteria I was measuring. And perplexity was okay? It wasn't at the top of the list? No. But in any case, I am just putting this out there to see if anyone else is doing this or if you happen to know anyone who is. You really need to be careful though, because an increasing number of people, whenever you ask them to conduct market research or perform an analysis, they just churn it out and it really shows too. Honestly, I'm not saying that you should not try running these tests. I find what you're saying quite interesting. Why not try that during the test phase? I am certainly not suggesting that you shouldn't do it at all. However, you really need to have an SDR follow up on those leads. Or at the very least run some targeted campaigns or conduct some user research. Whatever it takes just to verify that the data is actually accurate. Because you could easily end up wasting a massive amount of time on a target simply because the AI hallucinated and confidently claimed. Yes. Here are the top four ICPs you should go after based on what you're selling. And then you find yourself heading completely in the wrong direction, which is a huge mistake. That is correct. It really depends on the market, the country where you are currently selling and the specific prospects you are targeting. And for us at DigiPaper, we had three data tools, right? And we didn't really have just one, because you had one that was very good in the US and one that was very good in Europe. So you see, it's not a question of which one is the best, really. No, it's just that if you have tools that have limitations, unfortunately on their website, they'll never tell you where they actually excel. So it's up to you to run the tests. And, and for me, that if we're talking data versus tools, because we're not talking about tools like Salesloft or, or Outreach, where we're talking more about cap features, capabilities of what the tool can do, Data is more about the quality of the data and the coverage rate. I don't remember how you say it in French. Coverage rate. Yeah, your coverage rate in your market, actually. That's your point. Sometimes you use a tool for your icp and we always come back to that because you might say, okay, for my Persona, I'm getting three phone numbers. That's a problem. Or maybe just two. Oh, yeah, so that's a problem. There you go. So indeed, testing is a must. We're coming up on the last question. I knew our chat would last more than an hour, but in any case, it's been really cool. You were talking, you were telling me of the record, about tools that can't run on their own. What I mean is, at some point today we find ourselves in a setup where actually you're going to have your tool, sometimes several data tools, your CRM, which will be the core, your tool. I don't know, I really don't know what your tool that will make super fast presentations for you using AI anyway, lots of things, et cetera and all of that. You have to know how to orchestrate it, et cetera. At what point do you think you need a dedicated resource, call it rev Ops, gtm, engineers, whatever, to maintain that stack? That's a good question. I think you can start with the tools without having someone from the start, because you have markets. If, let's say, if your ICP is on LinkedIn, you can use tools. Can I mention tools or not? Then yes, you could say that. You could call them tools. I think you can use tools like Lemlist, Apollo Market or Apollo, which for me are. They're all in one solutions, really. You don't have to Cobble things together and integrate everything yourself. You don't necessarily need someone to handle that because if your clients are on LinkedIn, these tools are great for that. On the other hand, as soon as you start getting into it, wanting to add more complex stuff regarding signals specific to your market, you want, how should I put it, more advanced data. That's when you'll need to start bringing someone in from the outside. I think when you're starting out, you don't necessarily need anyone, but it's when you start wanting to. Because I think I'd say maybe let's say five salespeople. Once you hit five sales reps, you need someone below five. I don't think so you can get by with tools like that. As I was saying, you need some maintenance. Sure, but you don't need to cobble things together. I might as well start tinkering with advanced stuff. Okay, really interesting. My last question. Maybe I'll invite you back for this when AI is much more advanced, because I think that we are still a bit early, but it's good to maybe provide a few pointers. AI and Outbound Today I think we've made. We've had a lot of announcements. We're seeing some incredible workflows, et cetera. AI has replaced the dsdrs. We see some memes that are quite funny that show actually looking at the landscape for companies that aren't tech giants like Snowflake or Ramp. What can we actually achieve with AI right now? Can I just. I am saying for the sake of our listeners, it is January 2026. There you go. That is the date you can already automate your prospecting with AI. And I'm not talking about what you on LinkedIn because we've managed. I have. I'm already doing it with my clients. Actually, I don't talk about it publicly enough yet because I like to talk about certain topics once I've explored them enough and show what we've set up currently for one of my primary clients, this doctor team is responsible for handling all the cold calling, while the various messages we send on LinkedIn or via email are entirely AI driven. From my perspective, the sheer complexity of artificial intelligence in the modern landscape is precisely the reason why tools like the ones I just mentioned, Lemlist, Apollo Market, they're basic in that sense. It's. I think I know they have AI, but it's not advanced enough for me in that regard. So that's where we start. That's why you need something a bit more advanced if you want AI and good messages, because the issue with AI is actually the knowledge of what you feed it. And most of the time you say people who say AI agents, they don't work because honestly, it lacks the foundation, the knowledge of your product, your market and your CRM. And I mentioned CRM because the client I'm working with already has 4,000 corporate clients. So I can't afford to send out prospecting messages as if we've never spoken to them before. Most companies have already talked to them. So basically we have the building block where the AI understands your market, the building block that has access to your CRM info, to all the conversations that have already taken place, plus the building block of what makes a good email. And actually there's that. Plus on top of that, you add the signals building block. That's an extra layer. That's actually why for me, most messages I see on LinkedIn are garbage. They lack the knowledge aspect that AI really needs. And with AI, if what you're seeing isn't good, it's because what you gave, it wasn't. And now we're starting to get to get more and more. I don't have the exact figure in mind, but they've booked appointments with companies they never managed to book appointments with, even over the phone. So it's just, it takes a lot of. But I'm not going to lie to you, I'm already at over 40 iterations on the prompts we're using and all that. So it's not just, oh, yeah, here, just put in this prompt and hey, go ahead, you'll get that appointment tomorrow. No, it's a lot of work, but I know that it's maybe today. It's not as simple to set up as it will be in six months or a year, but I know that AI is already powerful enough to start seeing results. Listen, that's a great way to wrap up. It actually lets people imagine what we'll be able to do. I'll definitely have you back once you've maybe fully explored what you're currently setting up. I think that'll be interesting. And honestly, I'm really interested in it. I find what you're saying super interesting. We don't talk enough about CRM training versus what is actually happening out in the field. But the company doesn't start on day one just pitching its solution like that. So I think that is a really smart move. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. Where can people find you if they want to ask you questions or if they want to check out your great content. Is it mainly LinkedIn? Yeah. Thanks a lot again, Leticia for the invite. It was super interesting to discuss it. For me. It's LinkedIn. I post every day and then substack. I have my newsletter so Hard Boiled Kitchen, which I share right now. It's twice a week on there and we're going to go back to three, three times a week on there. LinkedIn posts are typically quite short, whereas newsletters tend to be significantly longer in comparison. It is very much like our podcast episode today. It really dives much deeper into the very heart of the matter at hand. Yeah. So if you're looking for some really specific use cases to follow, there you go. Anyway, thanks for sticking with the podcast until now. Listen, don't hesitate to leave us a five star rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. I'll see you soon for a new episode. Ciao. Help.