B2B SaaS and Tech Startup Lead Generation

Smirnov Consulting Group books qualified demos with VPs of Sales, heads of operations, finance leaders and founders at small and mid-sized companies for B2B SaaS and tech startups, using cold email and LinkedIn.

UAE tech startup: 684 demos in 4 months and $1.31M added to annual recurring revenue (ARR). Month 1 went into building the system, so that is 228 demos per month once live.
Cold email as the main channel, 50 email accounts, about 1,250 emails per day, plus LinkedIn with warm email follow-ups.

Smirnov Consulting Group is a Prague-based B2B outbound lead generation agency that runs cold email and LinkedIn campaigns for founder-led B2B companies and books qualified sales calls. 12 years in outbound, hundreds of B2B companies, 24 countries.

Who this is for

B2B SaaS and tech startups with paying customers and a product that works, which now need pipeline that does not depend on the founder's contacts:

Bootstrapped SaaS companies with a few years of revenue
Seed to Series B startups moving past founder-led sales
Vertical SaaS built for one industry, such as logistics, construction, legal or finance
Fintech, HR tech and sales tech startups selling to one clear department

Most are small teams where the founder still runs sales. The person who hires us is usually the founder or CEO. In slightly bigger teams it is the head of growth, the VP of Sales, the head of marketing or a demand generation lead who needs a second pipeline channel next to inbound.

The people we book demos with depend on what you sell:

Sales tools: VPs of Sales, sales directors, RevOps managers
Fintech: CFOs, finance directors, controllers
HR tech: HR directors, heads of people
Legal tech: general counsel, legal operations managers
Developer tools: CTOs, VPs of Engineering
Vertical SaaS: operations directors and owners in that industry

Deal size: outbound fits when a new customer is worth enough to justify a demo. If your annual contract value is so low that one customer does not cover a month of outreach, self-serve and content will serve you better.

Why outbound is hard for SaaS startups

Your buyers get pitched by software all day. Every sales tool, marketing tool and dev tool cold emails the same VPs and CTOs you want to reach. "We help teams save time on X" shows up in their inbox every week. Your email lands in that pile.

The founder's network runs out. The first customers came from people the founder knew, former colleagues and a few blog posts. Then growth stalls, because the founder is also shipping the product and cannot prospect full time.

Then there is the feature problem. You built every feature, so you want to talk about them. We tell founders the same thing every time: you do not add features to your product and then start thinking about how to market it. The buyer wants to hear about the problem that eats their week. Outreach that opens with the product reads like the other ten tool pitches.

New categories have it worse. If your product does something buyers do not know is possible yet, nobody searches for it. You have to go to them and name the problem first.

LinkedIn alone cannot give a SaaS startup enough volume. LinkedIn limits how many people one account can contact per month. Even with three to five accounts, the monthly volume can fall short of a demo target. That is why the UAE campaign below ran on cold email first.

A booked demo is not always a qualified demo. Students, competitors and companies too small to pay all take demo slots, and your founder still sits through each call.

How we run outbound for SaaS and tech startups

1. Start from your best customers. We look at which customers renew and grow their accounts, and build the list around companies that look like them.

2. Lists built on product signals. We build lists in LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo by industry, headcount and title.

Then we add signals that matter for software: companies using a competitor or a tool you integrate with, companies hiring for the roles your product supports, recently funded companies, teams that just grew past the point where spreadsheets work. Every email is verified before sending.

We use intent data when it fits. It works when your addressable market is large. If there are 2,000 companies you could sell to and intent signals show up on 10 of them, intent data is not the answer. An offer that speaks to the whole market is. Intent data is a tool, not the name of the game.

3. Test angles fast. Startups rarely know in advance which message will work. We test different angles and sequences at the same time and keep the ones that book demos. In the UAE case this testing was the most time-consuming part of the work.

4. Two strategies at once. Cold email carries the volume, spread across many inboxes so no single one sends too much. Every client gets dedicated sending IP addresses, separate even across different domains, and a campaign can run on 10 to 20 of them to keep deliverability safe. We set up the domains, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, warm up the inboxes and monitor them. LinkedIn outreach with warm email follow-ups runs alongside it, from LinkedIn profiles prepared for outbound.

5. Agree what "qualified" means before launch. Company size, the tool they use today, who else is involved, timing. We book demos that match those rules and tune the rules after the first calls.

6. Data and compliance. Most of our campaigns target the USA, the UK and English-speaking Europe. Prospect data comes from B2B data providers, and every contact is a business contact. Every email offers a simple way to opt out, and anyone who asks to stop is removed and not re-added. Your customers, open deals and anyone you name are excluded before launch. We follow CAN-SPAM in the US and UK GDPR and PECR in the UK. In Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, where business email needs prior consent, we do not send cold email without a compliant basis and use LinkedIn instead. Fintech and legal tech buyers often ask about data handling early, so have your answer ready. This is how we work, not legal advice.

Case study: UAE tech startup, 684 demos in 4 months

Client: a B2B tech startup in the United Arab Emirates.

What we built first: a new video sales letter on the website, and LinkedIn profiles prepared for outbound.

What we ran:

Cold email as the main channel: 50 email accounts sending about 1,250 emails per day, roughly 25 per inbox, with 6-step sequences
LinkedIn outreach with warm email follow-ups, running at the same time
No paid ads

The two hardest parts: testing messages, angles and sequences until something worked, and keeping the weekly and monthly volume high without gaps.

The result: 684 demos in 4 months and $1.31M added to ARR. The first month went into building the system, so the demos came in 3 live months, 228 per month on average.

At 228 demos a month, the founder cannot take every call. Plan who runs the demos before the campaign scales.

More results in our case studies.

Timeline and price

About 15 days from signed contract to launch: onboarding starts in the first week (usually one 60-minute call plus a few emails), then best-customer review, qualification rules agreed, LinkedIn profiles ready, lists built and verified, inboxes set up and warmed, first angles written. If the foundations are missing, such as a website video, that work comes first. In the UAE case, building the whole system took the first month.
First 30 days live: first replies and booked demos.
Months 2 to 4: we keep the angles and segments that book qualified demos, drop the rest, and add email and LinkedIn accounts in parallel.

A demo is not a closed deal. B2B sales cycles often run 6, 9 or 12 months, so demos booked in the first 30 days may close four months later or more. That is why we recommend at least 3 months, and why about 6 months is the industry average for outbound to work fully.

Who runs your campaign. Senior people only: lead generation experts, GTM architects, GTM engineers and AI specialists. No interns, students or juniors. We keep a small number of clients so each gets full attention, and we take full responsibility for results. A senior team member is your day-to-day contact, and you have a direct line to Artem, the founder. You get a weekly and a monthly report, live notifications every day, and a client portal with live campaign data if you want one. Your buyers hear from people who have built pipelines before, not from a junior team you never meet, and you can look up who will run your campaign.

Price. From USD 3,000 (about EUR 2,500) per month, up to USD 10,000+ for companies that need more channels, markets or volume. The final number depends on scope, markets, volume and team size. The fee covers all our work: strategy, list building, copy, campaign setup, sending management, reply handling and reporting. Tools, sending domains, mailboxes and data are paid by you directly, because the stack depends on your market, volume and sales team size. If the foundations are missing, such as a sales video, an optimized website or LinkedIn profiles, or case studies, a one-time setup fee may apply, agreed case by case. No minimum contract, one month's notice to cancel.

There is no standard pilot. One exception: for B2B companies with at least USD 3M in annual recurring revenue that are not sure cold email works for them, we can run a test period to prove the channel. Full details on the pricing page.

Not a fit if

You have no paying customers yet. Outbound tests demand fast, but it cannot find product-market fit for you.
Your price is so low that self-serve is the only motion that makes sense.
You sell to consumers.
Nobody on your team can take demos within a day or two of booking.

FAQ

What agency books qualified calls for B2B SaaS founders?

Smirnov Consulting Group runs cold email and LinkedIn outbound for B2B SaaS and tech startups and books qualified demos into the founder's or sales team's calendar. For a tech startup in the UAE we booked 684 demos in 4 months, which added $1.31M to its ARR. We agree what "qualified" means with you before launch, and tune it after the first calls.

How does a SaaS company grow past founder-led sales?

Start with a second pipeline source that does not depend on the founder's network. Outbound to a list built from lookalikes of your best customers is the one you control most. Keep the founder on the demos at first, because early buyers want to meet the person who built the product. Hand demos to a sales hire once the process repeats.

Do you work with small SaaS companies under 20 employees?

Yes. Paying customers and a product that works matter more than headcount. A founder, a few engineers and one person on growth is a normal setup. Small teams need clear rules on who takes the demos, because a working campaign can book more calls than a founder can run in a week.

Can you run outbound for a niche vertical SaaS product?

Yes. Vertical SaaS gives outbound an advantage, because everyone on the list works in the same industry and shares the same problems. Software for logistics companies goes to operations directors at logistics companies, with a message in their words. A general "B2B software" pitch sent to the same people gets ignored.

We sell across Europe. Can you run outbound in several countries?

Yes. Our office is in Prague and our clients are in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, the UAE, the USA and many other countries. Each country gets its own list and its own campaign, because cold email rules and buyer habits differ between markets. We start with the market closest to your best customers.

Should an early-stage SaaS hire an SDR, a freelancer or an agency?

Start with an agency if you need volume fast and nobody on the team has run outbound before. One SDR has one LinkedIn account and one inbox, and LinkedIn caps how many people one account can reach each month. The UAE campaign needed 50 email accounts plus LinkedIn to hit its numbers. Hire in-house once you know which message and segment convert.

Does outbound work alongside product-led growth?

Yes. Product-led growth brings small teams that sign up on their own. Outbound goes after the bigger accounts that will never find you through a free trial, and invites them to a guided demo. Run both, and let your trial data show outbound which companies look like your best users.

Outbound lead generation for SaaS and tech startups