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

In today’s issue, I’ll share why I think AI can (almost) entirely replace working in an office environment for remote salespeople.

I remember when I started my tech sales career, I was 24 and I had just moved to Berlin. It was back in 2015, and we were working 100% in an office. At the time, I loved it because I barely knew anything about sales, and being around my colleagues was the best way for me to learn. From running discovery calls, to listening to my colleagues close Enterprise deals, I was able to enjoy the Collective Brain of the office.

Now, imagine working remotely. You’re by yourself in your home office, Slack notifications going off every 10 seconds, and when you join your team meetings on Zoom, almost all cameras are off, and all of your colleagues are muted. You have no chance to learn from the Collective Brain of the office.

Let me show you how to solve that with AI:

The big problem with remote sales

Here’s a story for you.

My big brother used to work in the hospitality sector for 10 years before becoming an SDR for a remote tech company. He’s one of the hardest working person I know. He’s organized, he knows how to structure his day, and he is self-motivated. But he stayed in tech sales for 9 months only.

The main reason?

He felt lonely. He wasn’t able to feed of the energy of his colleagues, and he failed because he didn’t have access to the Collective Brain.

And that’s the main problem with working remotely. You don’t have any real human interaction, and it’s hard to learn anything from your colleagues when their cameras are off and their mics are on mute.

But you can solve a part of this problem with AI, here’s how:

Step 1: Explain your problem

I refer to the Collective Brain as the spontaneous knowledge that is created when groups of people work together in the same physical environment. Think about the last time you were at a team meeting, a party with friends, or simply with your family. There’s something special, some kind of energy and knowledge that is created, spontaneously.

You can use AI (ChatGPT or Claude) to emulate that knowledge, and solve problems. A good way to explain a problem is to follow this 4-step framework:

• Context: Give context about your situation, and what’s your problem
• Role: Give the AI a specific role
• Task: Give a task to the AI
• Format: Format the way the AI will ask you questions

Here’s an example I used, to help me close and important Enterprise deal at the end of the quarter:

In today’s issue, I’ll share my ultimate guide to closing your Q1 strong. I’m writing this newsletter on the 19th of March 2025. There are 9 business days remaining in Q1. If you’re like most remote salespeople I know, you’re far away from reaching your Q1 targets, and you’re getting desperate to close the deals in your pipeline before Monday 31st of March.

The good news is that you need to ask 3 simple questions to find out if your deal will close in Q1. The bad news is that you’re most likely not going to close these deals if you don’t have an answer to these questions already.

Let’s dive in:

The problem with most deals in your pipeline

If most of the deals you were working on in Q1 are still open, you’re in bad position. The chances of them closing next week are slim.

Why am I saying that?

Because most salespeople are afraid of disqualifying deals that have no chance to close this quarter. I’ve done it many times myself, and it’s always been a big contributor to missing my sales targets. Instead of asking tough questions that will most likely put the deal status on “Closed Lost”, salespeople prefer waiting and hoping for their prospects to magically send them a signed contract.

Here are 3 simple questions to find out if your deals have a chance to close.

Step 1: Ask what’s causing them to have conversations with you

This is one of the first questions you need to ask in your next conversation with your prospect. Instead of asking them why they are here, ask them “What’s causing you to have a conversation with me?”

This will help prospects open up and share the real reasons they are in the meeting with you. Some may just be curious (don’t waste your time with them), some may have a specific initiative and deadline they are working on (dig deeper).

Step 2: Ask what outcomes they want from your conversations

Second question will help you understand your prospect’s initiatives. By focusing on asking what outcomes they expect, you get them to share the agenda and goals they have for the conversation.

This will help you dig deeper, and disqualify prospects who may not have a compelling event. For example, if they answer that they are just checking or making a benchmark, you’ll know you can disqualify them and end the conversation as soon as possible.

Step 3: Ask when they can make a decision

Final question, and my favorite of all three. By asking prospects when they can make a decision, you do two things:

• you test the energy of your deal
• you understand their buying process

Most prospects won’t be able to give you a straight answer. This indicates they’ll have to involve other people in the buying process, and you can ask them additional questions about the steps required to close the deal. If that’s the case, you need to lay down a clear plan to get a conversation with their boss before the end of Q1, otherwise you won’t close the deal.

And these are 3 simple questions I recommend asking to understand if your deals have a chance to close in Q1. I’d love to give you a secret play, but there isn’t. If your deals aren’t qualified, and you’ve been working on them for a long time, prospects won’t turn into customers on your timeline, but on theirs.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris

In today’s issue, I’ll share why I think using AI for prospecting is a terrible idea. I’ve been posting on LinkedIn every weekday since 2019, and what was a great space to share tactical sales tips became crowded with memes, Gen-Zs sharing their make up tips, and “entertaining” sales content.

I can’t click the “Unfollow” button fast enough.

And there’s one main reason for this mess (we see it in all other platforms too): Artificial Intelligence. We can see its effects in cold outreach too. Tons of messages are sent by AI agents daily, crowding prospects’ mailboxes and LinkedIn DMs.

Here’s why it’s so bad, and what you can about it:

AI is terrible at finding good leads

I’ve tested tens of sales engagement tools promising to use AI to help you find perfect, hot leads. If you follow the instructions provided in the onboarding, you get a list of totally random people. The results are exactly the same as other lead generation tools that don’t use AI.

The main problem with the promise of AI finding leads for you is that most of these tools do not provide you with the right use case for AI. Almost all of them give you an empty text box, where you need to describe your Ideal Customer Profile.

I’ve been training thousands of sales reps, and 99% of them have no clue how to describe their ICP. So when writing a prompt, they write generic descriptions, like “I sell to sales leaders in tech companies”. Not surprising that they end up with a super generic list of prospects.

AI is terrible at writing messages

The worst AI use case I see in sales is around copywriting. Here’s what an AI-generated cold email looks like:

In today’s issue, I’ll share the exacts steps I follow to build a remote prospecting system. When selling remotely, it can get challenging to prospect. You don’t have a boss on your back, checking your activity, and you can easily procrastinate. Without the energy of a sales floor, creating consistent prospecting results is a lot harder than it looks.

I’ll show you how you can address this challenge in 3 simple steps.

Why remote prospecting is different from office prospecting?

Remote prospecting is quite different than prospecting from an office. When I started in tech sales in 2015, I joined a team of 30 in Berlin. We were all prospecting from the office. There was a great vibe, and a healthy competition. We were all opening new markets, and the camaraderie helped us book a ton of meetings.

Now imagine prospecting from your home office. You’re sitting alone in your bedroom, only interrupted by the noise of Slack notifications. If you want to speak to someone, you need to send and invitation, jump on a Zoom meeting, and fight with your camera to work. If you start getting tired, you can easily go for a quick nap, or start doing your chores.

This environment is the absolute worst if you want to prospect, which is why you need to create systems and rituals to fix your environment.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Plan your prospecting system

Let’s be honest, prospecting isn’t fun. You keep repeating the same task over and over, you get rejected a lot more than you’d like, and your only reward is a meeting booked (which has less than 30% of turning into business). It’s super hard to do consistently.

If you want to prospect regularly, you need to start by protecting your time. When it’s done, I recommend starting with follow-up messages, then finding new contacts to add to your sequence (determine how many you need here). When you’re done, add these people to your sequence (send them the first touchpoint), and you’re done for the day!

A prospecting system also needs a solid sequence. It’s a set of steps you follow until you either get a reply, or run out of steps. Here’s how I recommend creating your sequence.

When your sequence skeleton is done, you need to define what you’re going to write or say. I recommend using my prospecting template swipe file to do so.

Step 2: Get some quick wins

There’s a crazy misconception about outbound prospecting.

Salespeople believe their meetings won’t be worth as much if they are booked with someone they know, over a total stranger. I believed that for years, and my trajectory completely changed when I started including people I knew. Instead of chasing net new logos, contact past or current customers, lost opportunities, or people you know outside of work (they have to be relevant though).

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t contact people if you don’t know them, but it will make your prospecting more interesting because you’ll get a few replies and you won’t just get people ignoring you.

Another thing salespeople focus too much on is planning. They get stuck in the ideation phase, tweaking their messaging and channel before getting started. Instead, define your activity target (use the sales process calculator), create a quick sequence, and send messages.

At first, you won’t get much results. Your first two weeks will be the toughest. But if you prospect every single weekday, you’ll reach an optimal activity level, and you’ll gather enough data to understand what works and what doesn’t.

Step 3: Track early signs of success

I remember when I started my first sales job. I was obsessed with closing my first deal. You could feel it in everything I was doing. My prospecting messages where focused on getting people to sign, and all my calls were extremely pushy and aggressive. Josh Braun calls this the “commission breath”. That’s the biggest mistake I see when coaching salespeople.

Instead of obsessing over closing deals, focus on your early signs of success.

When using email, your first sign of success is your email landing in the primary inbox of your prospect (sounds obvious, but a lot harder than you think). If you’re having trouble with this, I recommend checking Maildoso. Your second sign of success with email is the open rate. Anything under 50% has to be worked on.

When using LinkedIn, your early sign of success is the invitation acceptance rate. If people do not accept your invitation, you won’t be able to message them, send them voice notes, or videos.

This is how you can build a simple remote prospecting system. Plan your system, get some quick wins, and track your early signs of success. And if you’ve already tried all this, but you need more advanced support, then I recommend checking my Prospecting Engine.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris

In today’s issue, I’ll share my top 5 sales tools for remote sales. There are over 5.529 sales tools in 25 sub-categories available to help us sell more. Finding the right tool for your need has become incredibly time-consuming. Most tools now claim to revolutionize how we sell with AI (spoiler alert: they don’t).

That’s why I’m going to share 5 tool categories (and examples) that you can’t afford to ignore if you’re selling remotely.

Let’s dive in:

Category 1: Sales Engagement tools

A sales engagement tool helps you structure your prospecting efforts. They can range from a simple sequencer to a full suite of prospecting tools, including lead research, sequencing, auto-reply, AI-assisted lead engagement, etc.

Here are 3 tools I recommend (I’ve tried all of them):

• Amplemarket: If you’re looking for an all-in one sales engagement tool, then Amplemarket is the one for you. That’s the tool I use every day to manage my prospecting, and it has absolutely everything you need. Ideal if you’re a sales leader with a big team.
• Reply.io: If you’re looking for a simple sales engagement tool, Reply.io does a lot of what Amplemarket does, but with a simpler setup and a lower price. Ideal if you’re prospecting by yourself.
• The Prospecting Tracker: The Prospecting Tracker is a simple Notion tracker I have created for salespeople who cannot choose their engagement tool (when their employer don’t want to switch tools). Ideal to get started.

Category 2: A CRM

A CRM is the most important sales tool to help you keep track of your deals. Most remote companies use Salesforce or Hubspot, but here are two simpler CRMs I recommend:

• Pipedrive: If you need a simple system to keep track of your deals, with a simple learning curve.
• Monday.com: Fully customizable CRM. A bit harder to set up, but ideal if you’re managing a team and want fully control on your data.

Category 3: A calendar link

A calendar link is a tool that allows prospects to book some time with you, without having to go back and forth. Here are 3 that I recommend:

• Calendly: I personally use Calendly since 5 years. Really simple, straight to the point, and you can even integrate with Stripe to get paid.
• Chili piper: The best platform to convert demand into pipeline. More complicated to set up, but a must for sales teams with more than 1 person.
• Built in links in Google: A recent feature Google has added to its calendar. Ideal when you’re getting started.

Category 4: A data backup

When using email and phone to prospect, you’ll find a maximum of 70% of the email addresses and phone numbers if you use one provider only. That’s why I recommend using at least one additional data provider to help you find the right data (especially if you’re selling outside of the US).

• Kaspr: The best tool to find mobile phone numbers. I’ve been working with them for a while and they never disappoint.
• Dropcontact: A great tool to find accurate emails, especially if you’re selling in EMEA.

Category 5: An e-Signature tool

Finally, an e-signature tool is a must if you’re selling remotely. Instead of sending contracts, getting prospects to print them, scan them, and send them back, you can use one of these tools to get the contract signed. They often have features for automatic follow-up with prospects.

• Pandadoc: The ideal tool to get contracts signed today. Really simple to set up.
• Docusign: The Enterprise solution you need if you’re selling to traditional verticals.

And these are the tools I recommend when selling remotely. You won’t need much more than that to do what matters in sales; prospecting, managing your deals, speaking to customers, and signing contracts.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris