Articles
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“I noticed you noticed me.” Delete. What replaced personalized cold email.
Personalized cold email stopped working the day everyone started doing it. The fix is to keep the research and add an opinion about what you found.
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What is a GTM engineer? (And why a small agency should care)
A GTM engineer builds the machine that finds your next clients: the list, the research on each prospect, the outreach, and the follow-up, wired together so it runs without you. For a small agency, that means a steady supply of first meetings with the right owners instead of whoever happened to call this month.
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What outbound costs: agency fees vs. an SDR’s salary vs. Clay and Apollo bills
Outbound costs a small agency one of three things: a monthly agency fee, an SDR’s salary, or software subscriptions plus somebody’s time to run them. A built system from DoBetter is a fixed fee, scoped after a $1,500 discovery.
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Hire an SDR, use an AI SDR, or build your own outbound system?
Hire an SDR when you have enough volume to keep one busy full time. Use an agency or an AI SDR tool when you want meetings fast and can live with generic messaging.
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What outbound automation handles: lists, enrichment, personalization, follow-up
Outbound automation handles the three jobs that eat a small agency’s prospecting time: building the list, finding real contact info, and writing the first line. For a small agency, it also handles reply sorting, call lists, and meeting prep, so the owner’s time goes to conversations instead of spreadsheets.
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Does cold outbound work for a small agency? Signs you’re ready
Cold outbound works for a small agency when two things are true: you can name exactly who you sell to, and someone has time to take the meetings. Without both, it either books nothing or books meetings nobody shows up for.
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Half my list was fax numbers. How to build a lead list with real phone numbers.
A lead list with real phone numbers comes from checking every business against its own website before anyone dials, then filling in the people with an enrichment service. The fix is four passes over the same list, and it takes about twice as long as exporting one from a database.
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“Reach out in March” is a yes. Cold email follow-up for the replies nobody answers.
Replies to cold email go unanswered because they land in the same inbox as everything else, and nobody owns them. The fix is a reply agent that sorts every reply into hot, mildly interested, or not interested, drafts the response to the hot ones, and puts a date on the “not now” ones.
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“Congratulations on your merger from 2023.” What buying signals are for, and when they go stale.
A buying signal is something a business or a person did recently that means they might need you now, and a signal older than about 30 days isn’t a signal, it’s trivia. The fix is an agent that watches the news, the job boards, and the decision-maker’s socials, keeps only what’s fresh, and hands you one line you can use.
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I drove an hour to meet a manager six levels down. How to prepare for a sales meeting in 30 minutes.
A sales meeting goes badly when the producer walks in without knowing who’s in the room, what the business did this year, and what they can’t leave without asking. The fix is a one-page brief, built by a small team of research agents, that lands 30 minutes before the meeting on whatever screen is in front of you.
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Nothing bad ever happens by talking to people. The call blitz, and why your CRM can’t run one.
A call blitz is one day where everyone in the agency does nothing but dial, and a good one produces about 100 dials, 20 conversations, and 3 appointments per person. The fix for a blitz that fizzles is a clean list and a screen that shows one name, one business, one phone number, and four buttons.
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My CRM is a data dumping ground. What a custom CRM does that the big one can’t.
A custom CRM is a screen you build for the way you actually sell, connected to the commercial CRM you already pay for, which keeps being the place the data lives. The fix for a CRM that makes you click twelve times to do one thing is to leave the data where it is and build the view on top.
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What marketing services look like for a small insurance agency (a system, with a person steering it)
Marketing from DoBetter is a system that creates assets and content for your agency, driven and steered by a human. It’s built for small agencies that have a website and a sign out front and nothing else that says “look over here.”
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What marketing costs a small insurance agency: an agency retainer, a freelancer, or a system
Marketing costs a small agency one of three things: a monthly agency retainer, a freelancer’s hours, or a marketing coordinator’s salary. A marketing system from DoBetter is a fixed fee, scoped after a $1,500 discovery, and the scope is set by what you’re already paying other vendors to do.
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Marketing agency vs. freelancer vs. doing it yourself vs. a system: which fits a small insurance agency?
A freelancer wins when you need one thing built fast. A marketing agency wins when you have the budget for a team and the patience for a retainer.
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What a marketing system makes for a small insurance agency: pages, posts, emails, and video
A marketing system for a small agency makes six things: landing pages, an answers page for clients, LinkedIn content, employee education emails, video, and graphics. Start with the landing page.
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Is your agency ready for marketing? One sign you are, and three signs to wait
An agency is ready for marketing when a valuable client asks, very earnestly, “You guys are wonderful. Why aren’t you more busy?” That question means the product works and nobody knows.
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My best post all quarter was a comment on a stranger’s post. A LinkedIn content strategy for agency owners.
Most agency owners’ LinkedIn goes nowhere because it’s all reshares of the company page and nobody shows up in anyone’s comments. The fix is a system that turns a short recording of you talking into posts in your own voice, plus the habit of engaging on other people’s posts.
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The same four questions, seven different ways. The landing page that answers them before your phone rings.
Agencies get buried in the same basic questions from a new client’s employees because there’s no one place those employees can find the answers. The fix is a landing page for each client, in that client’s brand, with the FAQs, provider lookup links, downloadable plan designs, and a chatbot that knows every answer you’ve ever given.
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Eight videos, one four-hour session. How a small agency makes video without a production company.
Small agencies rarely make video because every video turns into a production: a script, a shoot, an editor, and a week of waiting. The fix is a pipeline where a person films once and a system handles the cutting, captions, motion graphics, and checking, inside a brand look that’s decided in advance.
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There should be a human behind every health plan. Employee benefits communication that doesn’t stop after open enrollment.
Employees forget their benefits because the only time anyone explains them is open enrollment. The fix is a year-round email program to employees’ inboxes: small pieces of education on a steady schedule, reminders timed to the plan, and content made by a real person.
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