Smirnov Consulting Group booked 488 sales calls in 6 months for a software development company in Germany. The campaigns ran on LinkedIn with email in the same sequence, 5 steps each, all aimed at one niche. The first 12 calls were booked in the first 4 days.
The company needed a message its niche would answer
The client builds software for other businesses and had already chosen one niche to sell into. What it lacked was resonance: a message that made decision-makers in that niche accept a connection request and then write back.
That is a message problem before it is a volume problem.
We fixed the profiles first, then scaled sideways
In order:
- Profiles. We optimized several LinkedIn profiles for outreach, because prospects check the sender before they accept.
- One niche. Every list and every message targeted one specific niche inside the software buyer market.
- Lists. We built the lists in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
- Campaigns. We ran multiple campaigns side by side, each with 5 steps across LinkedIn outreach and email.
- Horizontal scaling. Once a campaign worked, we added accounts running it instead of pushing one account harder.
One tracked campaign: 84 requests, 52 connections, 40 replies
The proof screenshot we keep from this program shows one campaign's first stage:
| Stage | Number | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn connection requests | 84 | - |
| Accepted | 52 | 61.9% of requests |
| Replied after connecting | 40 | 76.9% of those connected |
It is a small sample from one campaign, so we do not treat it as a benchmark. What it does show is fit: 40 of the 52 people who connected wrote back. A reply rate like that is the signal to add accounts. A low one is the signal to change the message first.
488 calls, and every month beat the one before
| Period | Booked sales calls |
|---|---|
| First 4 days | 12 |
| Month 1 | 43 |
| Month 2 | 51 |
| Month 3 | 78 |
| 6 months in total | 488 |
Months 1 to 3 add up to 172 calls, so months 4 to 6 brought 316 between them. The second half produced almost twice the first, which is what horizontal scaling looks like in practice: the same winning campaigns, more accounts sending them.
The published record for this program counts booked calls. It does not include contracts or revenue, so we do not claim any here.
What this means for a software company selling into one niche
The fast start (12 calls in 4 days) came after the profile and list work, not before it. If your profiles look abandoned, the first days of a campaign are spent on people who check you out and leave.
This approach works when three things are true. You can name one niche and write for it. Your sending profiles hold up when a buyer clicks on them. And your team can take a rising number of calls, because month 3 alone brought 78.
It works less well if you sell to everyone. A message written for "any company that needs software" rarely gets 40 replies from 52 connections.
The software development page explains the full approach
- How we run outbound for software development companies
- Other results in our case studies
- How engagements are priced: pricing
