A lean agency wanted outbound sales without turning the founder into a full-time sales operator. We built an approval-based pipeline that researches prospects, drafts bespoke emails, sends approved outreach, and tracks follow-ups. The result: 1,000 prospects reached with a 4% positive reply rate.

1,000Prospects reached
4%Positive reply rate

The challenge

A lean professional services agency was doing outbound manually. Every prospect meant research, a personalised email, a send, and a follow-up reminder.

The team knew bespoke outreach worked better than templates. The problem was time. Research and writing consumed hours that should have gone into client work, and follow-ups depended on someone remembering to check the sheet.

Before: manual research, writing, and tracking scattered across browser tabs and a spreadsheet.
The pipeline turns separate manual passes into one approval-based workflow.

The solution

We built an agent pipeline for targeting, research, email drafting, sending, and follow-up tracking, with one human approval gate before outreach goes live.

Targeting and research. The agent scores prospects against fit and buying signals. We simplified the model to three questions: does this prospect have the problem, do they have budget, and are they actively looking?

Prospects are sourced through API-based searches and direct research. Each lead is verified before it enters the pipeline, so stale records are filtered early.

Composition and sending. Approved prospects move into a Google Sheet that acts as the database and interface. The agent drafts a bespoke email for each prospect, tracks send status, and prepares follow-ups. The goal is relevance, not template volume.

Four-stage pipeline: Research → Score → Compose → Send & Track — with a human approval gate after
The human approves the target list. The pipeline handles the execution.

The results

After going live, here is what the pipeline changed:

  • The human went from doing to approving. Research, lead import, email composition, and follow-up creation moved into the pipeline. The team reviews targets, confirms the angle, and reads responses.
  • 1,000 prospects reached without a full-time sales person. The pipeline ran in the background alongside client work.
  • 4% positive reply rate on bespoke outreach. Responses came from prospects the team would not have had time to reach manually. A subset led to conversations the team qualified as worth pursuing.
  • Follow-ups stopped falling through the cracks. Every prospect has a send status and follow-up trigger in the sheet.