This is how an engagement with Smirnov Consulting Group runs from the client's side: setup, what we need from you, how booked calls reach your calendar and how progress gets reported. Most of it comes down to a system our team builds and runs, plus a few jobs on your side that no agency can do for you.
Questions about working with us
Which companies do you work with?
Established B2B companies with a proven offer, happy clients and the capacity to serve more of them. Most sell high-ticket services or products: construction and civil engineering companies first, then industrial and manufacturing companies, marketing, advertising and SEO agencies, software development, IT services and consulting, business coaches and consultants, financial advisory, and SaaS and tech. That is the core of who we work for, and it rules out one group: a company still deciding what it sells, because our work is lead generation, not building a business from zero.
Do you work with companies outside the Czech Republic?
Yes. Smirnov Consulting Group has one office, in Prague, and clients in the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, the UAE, Singapore, Australia and many others. The list, the targeting and the sending setup are built around your buyers' market, wherever that is. Your buyers never deal with Prague anyway: they see your profiles and your offer, and once a call is booked, they meet your team.
Is outbound a good fit for my business?
It is if you can answer yes to five questions. Is your offer already selling, at a price you are happy with? Can you name the one buyer type you want more of in a single sentence? Do you have the hours to take the calls and the capacity to deliver if they close? Will you leave the system running for a full sales cycle without pausing? Would a stranger who checks you out after the email find proof? Five yeses, outbound is worth the money. Three, you are not ready for the replies yet, and the same checks shape who we take on.
Do you offer a full client acquisition system or just lead generation?
A full client acquisition system, run for you by the Smirnov Consulting Group team. What we do starts with fixing the profiles, offer, case studies and website, before anything is sent. Then come the lists, the sending infrastructure, LinkedIn and cold email sequences, reply handling and qualified calls booked into your calendar. Companies that already run their own infrastructure can buy Custom Lead Lists on their own instead.
What do I get from the free strategy session?
You leave with a full implementation plan for your business: who to target, how to position the offer, which channels and messages to use, and what results to expect. The session is free and comes with no obligation, whether or not we end up working together. Bring your current offer, a few recent clients you would like more of and an honest count of how many calls your team can take each month. If you want to know who you will be talking to, start with who we are.
What happens during onboarding when we start working with you?
Onboarding starts with your ideal customer profile: industries, company size, roles and the signals that show a company is ready to buy. From that profile we build the list and verify every address. In parallel we set up the sending domains and mailboxes. The sequences are written around your offer and your proof, and the first campaign goes out only when list, domains and profiles are all ready. That order is how we work.
What do you need from us before you can start a campaign?
Your case studies, your profiles rebuilt before anything is sent from them, and someone free to take the calls quickly. On the business side, we need what you sell, who buys it, and the industries, company sizes, roles and buying signals that describe your best clients. Sometimes we ask you to narrow that audience. A sales process that already converts at small numbers matters as well, because volume magnifies whatever is there. Everything else in the setup sits with our team.
What access do you need to our systems or accounts to get started?
Less than most clients expect, because cold email never runs from your main domain. Smirnov Consulting Group buys and sets up separate sending domains itself, so your main domain and company mailboxes stay out of it. Beyond that we need access to book meetings into your calendar, and login details for your CRM if you want leads pushed there directly. Nothing is sent from the new domains until warm-up is finished and the list is verified.
How long does onboarding take before the first campaign launches?
Plan for about 15 days from signing to the first campaign going out. Onboarding itself starts within the first 5 to 7 days, usually with one 60-minute Zoom call plus a few emails, and warm-up sets the floor: new mailboxes have to finish it before they touch a prospect. Our setup process prepares the profiles, offer and list in that same window. On one rebuild, setup ran longer than the client wanted, and the month after sending started produced six signed contracts. Sending early only hands prospects a first impression of you before you are ready.
Do you write the copy, or do we need to approve every message?
The copy is ours. Both the LinkedIn messages and the emails are written by the team that runs your campaign, built around your offer and your real case studies. Sign-off before launch works like this: you review and approve the sequences before anything sends, and after that the team keeps testing and refining variants without sending each one back to you. When you review, spend most of the time on the list and the targeting rather than the wording. Copy is the easiest part to fix later, unlike the list.
Do we need to provide our own CRM, or do you use one for us?
We work with whichever CRM you already use, and push leads into it directly. Which tool it is matters far less than whether leads get lost between the reply, the booked call and the follow-up, the three hand-off points in our process. If you have no CRM yet, set one up before launch, so that no reply or booked call lives only in somebody's inbox.
How much of our time will this take each week?
Most of your time goes into the sales calls, so it grows with results. Before launch, expect some hours on case studies, profile rebuilds and agreeing the targeting. Once campaigns are live, prospecting, sending, reply handling and booking sit on our side. Count the call hours honestly, though: if we book 20 extra calls a month, somebody has to take them, and deliver the work when four of them sign.
Who do we talk to day to day, a single point of contact or a team?
Day to day you deal with a senior SCG team member assigned to your account, never an intern or a junior doing the work. Every client also keeps a direct line to Artem Smirnov, our founder. Behind that person sits the rest of the work at Smirnov Consulting Group: list building, sending infrastructure, sequences and reply handling. Ask on the strategy call who exactly will run your account.
What does a typical week look like once a campaign is live?
Your side of the week is mostly taking calls. On our end, sequences keep going out across LinkedIn and email. Each reply is read and sorted by intent, and the interested ones get qualified and scheduled. The most useful thing you can send back is which of those calls were a real fit, because that feeds straight into the next version of the list.
How do you report on campaign progress?
Every report shows how many people were contacted, how many replied and what happened next. That last part is split into calls booked, calls that actually happened and deals signed, which is how we measure our own work, including the numbers that do not flatter us. For a German IT client, 712 replies became 59 interested prospects, 34 booked calls, 28 calls held and 5 contracts in 35 days. A report showing only the booked number would have hidden the 6 calls that never happened. Reports arrive weekly, with a fuller monthly report on top, plus live notifications as things happen day to day.
Do you offer ongoing strategy calls, or just campaign execution?
Both. Execution is most of our work, and strategy calls happen alongside the weekly and monthly reporting, whenever a decision needs you in the room rather than on a fixed extra schedule. Those calls cover the decisions that need you in the room: whether to open a new segment, whether the offer needs reworking and whether your team can take more calls before volume goes up.
How do you improve results over the course of a campaign?
Mostly by changing things other than the copy. The list gets sharper as replies show which industries ignore us and which titles forward us to someone else. Winning sequences get more volume, weak ones get cut, and whatever works is scaled horizontally by adding LinkedIn accounts and mailboxes, which is how we scale a campaign.
Do you handle scheduling and calendar invites for booked calls?
Yes, scheduling is part of our appointment setting work. Our team qualifies each interested reply, then books the meeting straight into your calendar over Zoom, Microsoft Teams or phone, and your team takes the sales call itself. With each booking your team receives the context behind it: who the prospect is, what they replied, and why they agreed to talk. Keep the gap short: a meeting set three weeks out with someone who has forgotten why they agreed is usually wasted.
How do you handle replies that come in outside business hours?
Coverage outside business hours is limited: replies are read and answered by people during business hours, as part of our appointment setting service, and anything that lands overnight is the first thing handled the next morning. On bigger builds one person's whole job is the inbox, because replies are where automation should stop. One badly handled answer costs everything it took to produce that lead. Speed while the reply is warm matters more than the clock. A "talk to me in March" is often worth more than a first meeting, so it gets an owner too.
What happens after a call is booked, do you help with follow up?
Your own team runs the sales call, and how much we help with the follow-up after it is agreed case by case: some teams want us tracking those slower-moving contracts, others want a clean handoff after the call. Whatever the split, name the owner before launch. Follow-up is the part nobody owns, even when the booking side has done its job. In one German IT campaign, 5 contracts were signed in 35 days and two more potential projects were still in the pipeline when we reported. Projects like those only close if someone keeps talking to those people.
Do you provide training for our own sales team on outbound?
Yes, through coaching and consulting, 1-on-1 or in a group, which is one of the ways Smirnov Consulting Group works and suits teams that want to run outbound themselves. We have also ended up working with clients' sales teams on closing more than once, because booked calls nobody converts make the whole engagement look like a failure. That work covers the first five minutes of a call, how your buyer decides, when to present the offer and rehearsed objection handling. The format for your team is worked out together, whether that means a single workshop or ongoing 1-on-1 coaching alongside the campaign.
What does success look like in the first 90 days?
Booked calls, plus a documented picture of which segments respond, which messages earn a reply, which titles turn into calls and what one buyer conversation costs you. Setup comes first and takes about 15 days, with nothing to screenshot. After launch the market starts talking back and calls build month on month: a UK social media marketing agency in our case studies went from 44 calls in month one to 57, then 68. Contracts arrive later, when your sales cycle lets them.
What is the process if we are not happy with the service?
Tell us early and tell us specifically. Most problems show up in the numbers before anyone has to raise them: a weak show-up rate points to the gap before the call, while calls that happen and do not close point to the sales process. Raise it with your senior SCG contact and we go through the numbers with you. If the fit is wrong, we would rather say so, and the exit terms are simple: one month's notice, since there is no minimum contract length to work around.
Do you offer month to month support after the initial contract ends?
Support after the initial contract runs the same way as the rest of our terms: no minimum length, one month's notice either way, so month-to-month is the default once the first term ends. Whatever the format, we advise against stopping and restarting later. A paused campaign does not resume where it left off: sequences break mid-flight, lists go stale and sending accounts lose their warmth. Ninety days tells you whether outbound works for you, while what it is worth usually shows up around month six. The current options are on our pricing page.