In today’s issue, I’ll share how you can turn a no into one (or more) meetings. When prospects reply negatively to a prospecting message, most salespeople stop and move on. It’s quite understandable. We don’t want to annoy our prospect, so we focus on the next one, until we get a yes.

In fact, this is what I’ve always suggested to do. I hate when I tell a salesperson I’m not interested, and they keep trying to convince me I’m wrong. But in 2025, outbound prospecting has become so hard, that you can’t afford to give up when you get a no. You’ve worked so hard to get a reply, you need to turn it into something positive.

Last week, I was running a 1:1 coaching call with one of my students, and we developed a simple tactic to turn negative answers into meetings.

Here’s that tactic, step-by-step:

Step 1: Accept the answer and ask for a favor

As humans, we tend to become tensed when people reject us. By acknowledging that and writing a short softening statement, you’ll dial the tension down.

Here’s a softening statement I love using: “Got it, Leslie, no problem with that, I understand that it’s not something you’re focused on right now.”

Now that the tension is gone, you can ask for a quick favor. I love using: “Do you mind if I ask you a quick favor? I won’t take it bad if you refuse 😊 ”

If the prospect isn’t too annoyed about your message, they’ll typically answer.

Step 2: Ask for intros to people from their network

Now that you turned a no into a yes comes the tough part. You need to ask if the prospect would be opposed to checking a list of people they are connected with, and telling you if they’d be comfortable doing an intro. Here’s the message I typically use:

“I’ve been checking who you’re connected with on LinkedIn and I think there are 5 people who could potentially need help with the problem I’m solving with my offering. Would you mind looking at that list and telling me if you’d be opposed to doing a short intro?”

Most people won’t have a problem going through the list and telling you who they are comfortable introducing you to. This switches the focus of your prospecting to other people, and it’s reassuring for your prospects because they know you’re not trying to book a meeting with them anymore.

Step 3: Make it easy for them to say yes

When the prospect comes back with the list of people they are comfortable doing an intro to (some won’t be comfortable doing so), you know you’re on the right path. This is where most salespeople drop the ball. They ask the prospect to send an intro message, and most people are too lazy, so they don’t do it.

Instead, propose to write the introduction message on behalf of the prospect. Here’s how I typically play it:

“Thanks for the list Leslie. Do you mind if I write the introduction message on your behalf and share it with you, so you just have to quickly check it and send it?”

Most people won’t object to that. You’re making their lives simpler. If they accept, use a message like this one:

“John, Thibaut (in cc) reached out me a few days ago to share a few ideas on how I could prevent my reps from getting dispersed when running outbound sequences. It’s not a problem we have, but Thibaut asked my if you’d have this problem. I figured I’d do a quick intro and let you two take it from there.”

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t have any issue sending this to people I know. It’s short, it’s direct, and it’s honest. If I received this email from someone I know, I wouldn’t have any problem taking a call from the salesperson (if I was interested in solving the problem they can help with).

And this is the way you can turn a no into one or more meetings. It takes a bit of practice to get it right, but I can’t encourage you enough to give it a try. If you got a no from an outbound prospecting message, you started a conversation, and you can’t afford not to use this relationship to start more conversations. It’s going to be 100x simpler than trying to contact total strangers.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris

In today’s issue, I’ll tell you why writing perfectly good prospecting emails and LinkedIn messages is far from enough in 2025 and beyond. We’ve all been in that situation. You found the perfect prospect, they’ve been posting regularly, and you worked extra-hard to write that perfect email.

You hit send, expecting to get an answer, but you get nothing. You follow-up regularly, you add new personalization elements, but nothing seems to work.

Well, you’re not alone. Millions of salespeople are facing the same struggle.

Let’s me show you how you can fix that, step-by-step:

Good copy has become commoditized

I remember when I started outbound prospecting in 2015. I was writing mediocre emails, sent with minimal personalization, to prospects that weren’t always a fit. I was able to book 12 to 17 meetings, with less than 2 hours of daily prospecting. In 2025, this tactic would generate nothing. Not even a reply.

The main reason is that good copy has been commoditized. Open your LinkedIn feed and you’ll see prospecting tips and tactics all over your feed. Every sales rep is using AI to find and duplicate the best-performing copy. As a result, prospects are inundated with tons of outbound messages, most of them being pretty good.

So, what can you do about it?

Step 1: Contact the right people

The best thing you can do to get more replies and book meetings is to contact the right people. Sure, you need to make sure you’re contacting people in your ICP. But you need to contact people who won’t ignore you.

And people who won’t ignore you are people who have already heard about you. For example, I like to contact prospects who have replied to my previous messages, old opportunities that didn’t close, or active customers so I can ask for referrals. If you contact prospects who have already hear about you, you’ll get more replies, and your messages won’t have to be that good.

Obviously, this is more challenging if you’re just getting started in a new job, but it’s a tactic you should not ignore if you’ve been working for a few months in your current company.

Step 2: Use more than one channel

Now that you’re contacting the right people, you need to do it on more than one channel. I see too many salespeople focus on email only, and get no replies. When you use one channel, you reduce your chances of getting replies.

For example, I’m really active on LinkedIn. Most of the conversations people start with me are on LinkedIn. If you contact me by email only, you’ll most likely end up in my spam folder. You won’t even get to me by phone because I have a French phone number that is only active when I’m in Europe (2 months a year max).

Always use at least 2 channels in your prospecting sequences. I’m personally a fan of using LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and email.

Step 3: Stay consistent

Finally, consistency will make or break your whole prospecting strategy. You can write the best messages, contact the right people, and use 4 channels, but you won’t get any results if you don’t stay consistent.

And that’s the hardest part in sales (and life in general).

Consistency (or the lack of it) is the reason most people are not as healthy as they’d like to be, not as successful as they’d like to be, or why they can’t seem to finish what they start.

That’s why you need to build a prospecting routine. This routine will help you focus on your inputs, without worrying too much about your result.

And these are 3 steps you can follow today to start seeing results when prospecting. Contact the right people, use more than one channel, and stick to a consistent prospecting routine. Prospecting isn’t rocket science, it’s all about repeating simple, seemingly unimportant tasks in a systematic way.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris

In today’s issue, I’ll share what I see as the true price of working remotely. I’m writing this newsletter from a co-working space in Berlin (I live in Mexico normally), and I could be writing it from anywhere, thanks to my remote work setup.

This is one of the many benefits of working remotely. You get to choose how you organize your time, where you work from, and you have more control over your workday.

But all this freedom comes at a price. And you need to know about it if you want to keep living the dream life.

Let’s dive in:

Why working remotely is so interesting

Working remotely sounds like the perfect setup. You avoid rush hours, you save on gas, restaurants, and you can organize your work as you wish. Some companies even reimburse remote office setups. It’s a fantastic work situation if you’re already experienced, and you want to organize your work around life, not the way around.

It’s also liberating to avoid forced social interactions with your colleagues. If you’re an introvert, it drains less of your energy, and it’s a great way to stay focused on the task at hand. There are mostly benefits to working remotely if it’s something you choose (vs being forced to work remotely when you need an office environment to stay focused).

But working remotely comes with a set of problems that you can’t ignore:

Problem 1: You’re giving up job security

Working remotely means working from home for most people. You’re not allowed to work from abroad (or for a very limited time), and your employer is constantly tracking when you log in, and trying to control your work environment.

Real remote work implies working from where you want, when you want. In a lot of cases, this type of setup means you have to give up your employee status (and all the benefits that come with it) to become a contractor. Concretely, you’re giving up job security and you’re employer becomes a customer.

To me, this is the definition of freedom, but it’s a stressful situation to be in for most people.

Problem 2: You’re on your own

Working remotely means being physically alone. No water cooler discussion, no office gossip, no lunch with your colleagues. If you ask me, that’s paradise. But it’s hell for a lot of people. Humans need social interactions, and Slack messages or Zoom meetings don’t replace the physical need we have to be around other people.

Career progression also suffers when working remotely. Being in an office with your colleagues helps create political soft power. You get to spend time with people who can impact your career, and a lot of this soft power is built unconsciously, through daily interactions with your colleagues.

Problem 3: You can never really go back to working in office

The last big problem I see with working remotely is that you can’t really go back into working in an office every day if you’ve been used to a remote role. I’ve met a lot of salespeople who worked fully remotely for years, before being laid-off and having to accept roles that were a 100% in office.

All of them are miserable. They had built a life in their own terms, but were forced back into a way of working that completely clashed with their view of life.

All of them are in existential crisis.

They need the job because they have to pay the bills, but they hate their lives. A lot of my friends live in Germany, and they work for a year, reload their unemployment benefits, and stop working for a year, before starting the cycle again.

And they are DEPRESSED.

That’s why I came up with an idea. I’m planning a retreat in Mexico for remote salespeople who are in an existential crisis. If that’s you, please join the waitlist and reply to the follow-up email, I want to talk to you.

And this is the true price of working remotely. You get to live the dream life, but it can get taken away at any time, and you have no control over it. One day you’re making 6-figures working from wherever you want, the day after you get laid off, with two weeks severance.

There has to be a better way.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris