From no outbound motion to 52 qualified meetings per month and $740K pipeline in 4 months.
This Series A payments platform had strong product-market fit within their existing network but no structured way to reach beyond it. Pipeline was unpredictable and entirely dependent on founder relationships. Arashi OPS built a full outbound infrastructure targeting CFOs and finance leads at mid-market companies — taking them from 4 qualified meetings per month to 52 in under four months.
Qualified meetings / month
Pipeline value
Response rate
Prospects contacted / month
Sales cycle (days)
Founder hours on BD / week
Challenge
The company had closed their first eight customers through founder relationships and warm introductions. That network was running dry. The sales team had no outbound process, no verified prospect lists, and no infrastructure for cold outreach. Every quarter was a guessing game.
- 4 qualified meetings per month — all from existing relationships
- No outbound process. Zero cold email infrastructure in place.
- No ICP definition. Team was reaching out to any company that seemed relevant.
- CRM had less than 200 contacts with no enrichment or lead scoring
- Sales cycle averaging 110 days due to late-stage qualification
Strategy
Before deploying a single email, we spent two weeks defining the ICP with precision: company size, tech stack indicators, growth signals, and the specific buyer title most likely to champion the product. The strategy was multi-domain cold email targeting two buyer personas simultaneously — CFOs and VP Finance — with separate sequences and value propositions.
Phase 1: ICP & Infrastructure
Two-week ICP definition sprint followed by cold email infrastructure setup. Three sending domains configured and warmed. Apollo and Clay deployed for prospect research and data enrichment.
Phase 2: Campaign Deployment
Launched two parallel campaigns targeting CFO and VP Finance personas. 7-touch sequences with A/B tested subject lines. Smartlead deployed for sending management and deliverability monitoring.
Phase 3: Qualification & Routing
Claude qualification layer built to score positive replies against ICP criteria. Qualified leads routed directly into HubSpot with deal stage pre-set and context attached. Sales cycle reduced by 50 days as a result.
Execution
The first three weeks were entirely infrastructure: domains, data, and sequence writing. No outreach went out until the system was fully tested. By week four, the first campaign was live. By week eight, both personas were running at full volume with daily lead flow into the CRM.
Results
Four months in, the company had a fully operational outbound system generating 52 qualified meetings per month. Pipeline had grown from near-zero to $740K. The sales team was working qualified, context-rich leads — not chasing cold contacts. The founder was no longer the primary driver of new pipeline.
Lessons
Cold email infrastructure is not optional.
Most companies try cold email with a single domain and generic copy, get poor results, and conclude it doesn't work. The problem is never the channel — it's the absence of proper domain setup, warm-up, deliverability management, and sequence strategy. Infrastructure first.
Qualification at entry changes everything downstream.
Building a qualification layer that scored replies before any human contact reduced the average sales cycle from 110 to 58 days. Reps spent time on leads that could actually close. That alone justified the entire engagement.
Founder-dependent pipeline has a ceiling.
Every company that scales past a certain point does so because they replaced founder-driven sales with a repeatable system. The transition is uncomfortable. It's also necessary. The sooner it happens, the longer the compounding runway.
All outcomes
Qualified meetings / month
Pipeline value
Response rate
Prospects contacted / month
Sales cycle (days)
Founder hours on BD / week