How Grow Big Ventures got a 38% reply rate selling outbound to outbound buyers

What wasn’t working

GBV's buyer is a revenue leader exhausted by agency outbound, but most agencies build their own playbook and are the last people to reply to a cold sequence. The team was burning hours scraping lookalike lists that returned competitors and tire-kickers.

What they changed

They pointed Saava at the LinkedIn voices their buyers actually follow, Clay, Smartlead, Lemlist, and the loudest outbound creators. Every revenue leader engaging with that content lands as an ICP-scored lead with verified email and phone, in the same hour they engaged.

How it played out

1. The cobbler's-children problem

   Selling outbound to outbound buyers is brutal. Their inbox is the most fortified inbox on the internet, and cold lookalike lists were dropping every message in spam.

2. Watching the room their buyers are in

   Instead of scraping titles, GBV monitored the creators their ICP follows. Every comment on a Lemlist or Clay post became a real-time signal that the person is shopping for what GBV builds.

3. Replies, not opens

   Within the first 60 days, the reply rate on intent-sourced sequences hit 38%, eighteen times the team's cold benchmark, and the seven builds that closed in Q2 paid for the year's tooling several times over.

The steps, if you want to try this

1. 01List the tools and creators your buyers already follow. For GBV that was Clay, Smartlead, Lemlist and the loudest outbound voices.
2. 02Track those profiles so every person who likes or comments is scored against your ideal customer profile.
3. 03Work each lead while the engagement is fresh, using the post they reacted to as the reason for reaching out.
4. 04Compare reply rates against your cold lookalike lists and move budget to whichever source wins.