In today’s issue, I’ll share how I built $98,576 in pipeline in the last 3 weeks, and how I closed $50,432 in the same time frame. I’ve been working for myself for 7 years and these have been the most exciting 3 weeks since I left the last job I ever had.

2025 is a rough year for most salespeople. Budgets are slashed everywhere, layoffs happen daily, and economic uncertainty prevents a lot of businesses from making purchasing decisions.

But not everything is going wrong. The basics of prospecting and sales still work, and buyers are still making purchasing decisions to solve their problems.

Here’s how I manage to build all this pipeline in 3 weeks only:

Step 1: Build a monthly plan

For the last 2 years, I’ve been working without discipline. I was in a period of my life where I didn’t really feel like pushing to work more, so I took work as it came. In September of this year, I decided to do things differently. I started the month by giving myself the public goal of closing $30,000 in September.

I broke down this goal into smaller goals and I listed 4 ways I would make money:

• Agent work
• Affiliate revenue
• Sponsored content
• 1:1 coaching/training

With these 4 revenue streams, I had a clear idea of what I needed to sell, and what type of message I would need to use in my prospecting.

Step 2: Write down weekly goals

My first week started pretty well, but I got lucky. I was at the end of a sales process that had started in August, and I closed $4,000 with a brand to create a video, 1 sponsored newsletter, and 2 LinkedIn posts.

I also had asked one of the companies I’m an affiliate with if they could recognize a deal they closed thanks to an online course one of my customers took. They accepted, another $4,200 closed on my first week.

But on the first Sunday of the month, I realized that my first week was a lucky shot. So I decided to write down my goal to make $10,000 on the second week in my notebook. And that week, I closed $32,630! I then skipped a week (don’t ask me why, I don’t know myself) and I didn’t close anything that week (not surprising).

So I wrote down $20K on my notebook on Sunday, and I closed $6,250 at the moment of writing (with another $14,944 I can potentially close before Sunday). Writing down your goals really work!

In today’s issue, I’ll share how I almost lost an $18,500 deal by celebrating too early. If you’ve been in sales for a while, this happened to you for sure. You go through a smooth sales process, get a verbal commit, and then start dreaming of what you’ll buy with your commission.

This happened to me last Friday, and I almost lost the deal because of contract terms I didn’t think of bringing up during the negotiation. Here’s the story, how I dealt with this roadblock, and how I turned it into a potential upsell opportunity:

The story

As you may have seen, I recently started representing creators as their agent. In short, I take care of all the commercial part for my creators working with brands. I negotiate deals, check contracts, and make sure my creators’ interests are protected.

Last Friday, one of them introduced me to a brand that was interested in working with them. We exchanged a few emails and got on WhatsApp to negotiate.

After a few messages exchanged, we agreed on the terms and settled for $18,500 to sponsor 3 of my creators. I got confirmation that paperwork was on the way, deal closed.

Or so I thought.

The weekend passed, and I was already calculating my commission, looking at which Jeep Wrangler this money would help me buy (I really want to buy a Jeep Wrangler), and I was pretty happy to see that my agent work was working.

Until Sunday, when one of the creators shared that the contract had an exclusivity clause. The brand wanted to have exclusivity and their definition of it was pretty large. Only problem was that all 3 creators were in contract with a brand they considered to be a competitor.

Oops.

How I fixed it

I could not believe this was happening. I sent a WhatsApp to my contact, explaining that the 3 creators were in contract with a brand that could possibly be competing with them (I hoped it wouldn’t be a problem).

But she told me they were definitely considering this brand to be a competitor. They then told them we would most likely have an issue to work with these 3 creators.

But then I explained them how exclusivity would be something they’d have to pay for, how their definition of exclusivity would prevent them from working with most top creators in the B2B sales space, and I gave them an example of a successful collaborations when I used to work with 2 competing brand.

And it worked!

They told me they were pretty new to this, and they were willing to alter their definition of exclusivity, so they could work with the creators.

How I turned it into an upsell opportunity

I was relieved. I managed to get rid of a roadblock and to keep the deal alive. But even better, this obstacle turned into an upsell opportunity. The brand asked me when the contracts with the potential competitor were ending, so they could negotiate exclusivity at that moment.

And exclusivity with creators is something worth a lot. You have to estimate the total value of the contracts that will be lost for the creator if they only work with one brand. This is where 6 figure contracts can be negotiated.

Key learnings

I learned a ton from this experience. I got reminded to never calculate your commission before the deal is closed, but I also learned a lot of things about negotiation:

• contract terms are always negotiable, nothing is fixed
• brands will pay a lot of money to get exclusivity from a creator
• a deal is not closed until a contract is signed, or an invoice is sent
• roadblocks can turn into upsell opportunities when tackled the right way

And these are my learnings from this experience. I’m happy it came early in the process of becoming a sales creator agent, so I don’t learn it the hard way on a bigger contract.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut

In today’s issue, I’ll share how I build and execute a prospecting sequence in 2025. Back in July, I met with Alan Ruchtein and we worked together on building what we consider the best prospecting sequence you can do in 2025.

Most salespeople have a hard time booking outbound meetings. Between spam folders filtering every unsolicited email, LinkedIn being completely flooded with AI content, and cold calls getting screened on Apple devices, it’s harder than ever to start conversations and book meetings.

That’s why we went back to basics and shared how we build a sequence from scratch.

Let’s dive in:

In today’s issue, I’ll share how I reached a 36.3% reply rate, and booked 3 meetings, only 2 days after starting prospecting.

Most salespeople are struggling to book meetings through outbound these days. They try moonshots and only focus on landing meetings with C-level at Fortune 500 companies. That’s a recipe for failure in 2025.

So, today, I’m going to show you I find prospects to contact, start conversations, and book meetings that turn into real opportunities. Without having to wait for weeks to get a reply.

Let’s dive in:

Step 1: Ask yourself these 4 questions

I always recommend mixing total strangers (prospects) and people you know when starting a prospecting campaign. This will help you get more answers faster, because a part of your list is made of people who have already heard from you.

Here are 4 questions you can ask yourself to find people you’ve been in touch with:

• Who did I speak to, but wasn’t interested at the moment? → closed lost opportunities
• Who recently commented or reacted to my/someone else’s posts? → people with potential problem you can help with
• Who recently visited my profile? → people who were potentially looking for information
• Who’s a really close person I can contact to get insights? → potential for introductions

Step 2: Build your lists

Now that you have 4 different tiers of prospects, you can start building a list in your sales engagement tool. I personally have experience working with Amplemarket and La Growth Machine, and they have som pretty advanced segmentation features for your lists.

These lists should be segmented, based on the questions you’ve asked yourself in step 1. I recommend to do a bit of list building every day instead of building a massive list. If you use your posts or other people’s post, new prospects will pop daily, so you can keep feeding your list as you go. The same is valid with profile viewers.

Step 3: Contact them where they are

This final part is critical. Most salespeople would take a list and drop it in a standardized sequence. It used to work in 2018, but in 2025, you need to be more agile.

For example, I contacted people on the following channels:

• LinkedIn
• Email
• Whatsapp
• Limelight (I had a chat with a prospect who used to work with me)

I’ve been going back to my past conversations with every single person, and I reached out to them where they replied last. This is a critical step to start more conversations.

Another important point is the way I wrote my messages. I avoided using long sentences or buzzwords and wrote like I speak.

I contacted 22 people, got 8 replies, and booked 3 meetings from these conversations. When prospecting, never forget that a dollar from a stranger is worth the same as a dollar from someone you know. And it’s easier to reach out to people you know than total strangers.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut