From 0 to 20 demos in 30 days

Adem Muzaferovic

Adem is one of five co-founders of Cobey AI and serves as the company’s CEO. With a background in entrepreneurship and experience as a project manager, he takes a generalist approach to building and scaling the company.

In the early days of a startup, time is precious. So is focus.

A German B2B SaaS company had both, but not enough resources to build a sales team. Despite a great product and a website that converted, they lacked what so many founders struggle with: predictable, outbound growth.

They tried the usual tactics: cold messages, scraped lead lists, mass emails.

The results?

  • 1.2% response rate.
  • Zero demos booked.
  • 15+ hours per week burned on outreach that went straight to the spam folder.

Their mistake wasn’t intent - it was context. They treated prospects like targets, not like potential partners. And every message looked like it.

From frustration to transformation: What changed?

Enter our AI-powered Sales Agent. Not a tool. A teammate.

In just 30 days, it completely rebuilt their pipeline. But not through templates or automation spam.

Instead, we took a research-first approach:

  1. ICP analysis: The agent studied their ideal customer profile and successful past conversations.
  2. Contextual research: It pulled live data on target companies – including funding events, leadership changes, tech stack, and interview statements.
  3. Mapping insights to benefits: The agent translated this context into value-driven outreach, unique for every prospect.

This wasn’t just personalization. It was relevance and it changed everything.

The AI didn’t just write messages it constructed hypotheses: What might this company be struggling with? Where does our solution fit? What language do they use to describe their pain? Each message became a micro-strategy.

Instead of firing off hundreds of low-effort emails, the agent operated like a strategy consultant: diving deep into the context, building business cases, and presenting them in human language.

Why most outbound fails (and what science says about it)

According to recent benchmark reports, generic cold outreach still dominates B2B.

  • “95% of all cold emails never get a reply.” (Belkins, 2025)
  • “The average response rate for non-personalized outreach sits at 1–5%. For SaaS companies: even lower.” (Woodpecker, 2025; Weezly, 2025)

In contrast:

  • “Research-based personalization increases response rates up to 17%” (Woodpecker, 2025)
  • “Top outbound teams generate 8x more meetings when they lead with context.” (Gong Labs, 2025)

The psychology is simple: People ignore what’s irrelevant. But they engage with what feels tailored.

Buyers are overwhelmed with inbound noise. According to HubSpot (2024), the average decision-maker receives over 120 outreach messages per week across channels. The winners aren’t louder. They’re smarter.

Expandi (2025) reports that personalized LinkedIn DMs yield double the reply rate of templated ones (10.3% vs. 5.1%). Outplay (2024) found that research-based emails drive 6.4x more positive responses than static templates.

Cold outreach fails when it feels like a campaign. It works when it feels like a conversation.

The process in action: Week-by-week

Week 1–2: The agent researched 200 prospects based on recent company events, market signals, and team composition.

This included:

  • Scraping public funding databases (e.g. Crunchbase, Dealroom)
  • Pulling leadership interviews from podcasts or media
  • Analyzing tech stack data via tools like BuiltWith, Wappalyzer or SimilarTech
  • Detecting relevant hiring signals (e.g. job postings in RevOps, Data, or Product roles)

These signals weren’t treated as trivia. They became hooks. The agent translated “You’re hiring a Head of RevOps” into “Your GTM stack is scaling here’s how we reduce handover friction.”

Week 3–4: Follow-ups adapted to new developments and incorporated live data from funding updates, hiring announcements, or product launches. Even second and third emails reflected changes in the prospect's environment.

Each message was written by the agent context-rich, value-focused, and personalized to the recipient’s current challenges.

This is how outreach becomes consultative. And it shows in the numbers:

  • +40% more qualified leads vs. their previous attempts (Belkins 2025)
  • +52% conversion from initial contact to booked demo (Martal 2025)
  • +10% e-mail open rate through AI-optimized subject lines (Woodpecker 2025)

Beyond the numbers, the agent documented learnings: which hooks worked, which objections surfaced, which industries showed highest conversion. This became the startup’s living playbook.

Founder impact: reclaiming time and focus

One of the least talked-about costs of outbound? The mental bandwidth it consumes.

Writing 15 cold emails a day might only take 90 minutes, but it breaks deep work cycles, splits focus, and drags attention away from what matters: product, strategy, culture.

With our Sales Agent handling outreach, founders at this SaaS company reported:

  • 3–5 fewer hours per week on outreach-related work
  • More headspace for closing deals and managing customer success
  • Freedom to focus on GTM strategy instead of daily inbox hustle

According to Salesforce’s State of Sales 2023, reps spend only ~28% of their time actively selling. The rest goes into email writing, admin work, and CRM updates. AI flips that ratio.

This isn't just a time saver it's a strategic unlock. The founders were able to reallocate time to:

  • Run onboarding calls for new customers
  • Launch two new integration features
  • Prepare fundraising materials for their upcoming Seed+ round

The agent also reduced coordination costs. No handovers, no briefings, no back-and-forths. It worked 24/7. And every insight it uncovered, from objections to FAQs, fed directly into product and marketing.

What 20 demos really mean

These weren’t just meetings. They were informed conversations. Prospects came in having read the message, visited the site, and already understood how the solution mapped to their problem.

Why? Because every interaction was designed to build trust and show care.

Every "Hi Sarah" email referenced:

  • Her company’s Series A raise
  • Their Salesforce + HubSpot stack
  • A direct quote from her TechCrunch interview

This shows effort. And effort gets noticed.

The result:

  • Fewer objections
  • Shorter sales cycles
  • More pipeline clarity
  • Higher show-up rate and follow-up engagement

Several prospects even forwarded the emails internally. One response included:

“I normally don’t reply to cold emails. But this one stood out. Let’s talk.”

We didn’t just create meetings. We created momentum.

From cold to closed: The new way to build pipeline

The classic B2B playbook assumes that building outbound capacity means hiring an SDR team. But for startups, that often means:

  • 6–12 weeks of onboarding
  • Risk of churn before ramp-up
  • Low ROI on low-performing hires

AI flips the model: build a playbook once, let the agent execute at scale, and refine continuously.

Instead of replacing humans, it accelerates them. Your Head of Sales now spends time reviewing conversations and closing deals, not micromanaging inboxes.

This approach also creates a repeatable, documented sales motion. Every successful sequence, CTA, or trigger condition becomes part of a growing knowledge base.

Over time, the Sales Agent isn’t just your outreach engine, it becomes your institutional memory.

And it scales infinitely. One agent can test hundreds of messages, channels, and personas, without fatigue.

Takeaway for founders: AI agents aren’t replacing sales. They’re replacing spam.

The research is clear: outbound still works, but only when it’s done with intention.

Our Sales Agent acts like your best SDR would: it listens, it learns, and it reaches out with purpose.

“Founders spend 70% of their time on repetitive sales tasks. AI can cut that in half.” (Salesforce State of Sales, 2023; HubSpot 2023)

If your calendar is empty but your product is strong, your problem isn’t sales, it’s scale.

Don’t hire a full team before you test your message. Let an agent validate it first across ICPs, markets, and angles.

Then scale what works.

Meet your AI Agent or keep spending 15 hours a week writing emails no one reads! 

Sources

The information presented in this article is based on current industry research and benchmark reports from 2023–2025, including:

  • Woodpecker.co (2025): “Cold Email Benchmarks: How Personalization Impacts Response Rates” - Analysis of over 20 million outbound emails across B2B industries
  • Gong Labs (2025): “What Separates Top Outbound Teams? Context Over Cadence” – Study based on 28 million sales interactions
  • Belkins.io (2025): “Why Most Cold Outreach Fails - And How to Fix It” - Outbound sales audit across 100+ SaaS companies
  • Martal Group (2025): “Conversion Rates in B2B Sales: The Personalization Advantage” - Lead generation benchmarks and comparative studies
  • Salesforce - State of Sales (2023): “Time Allocation and Efficiency Gains through Sales Automation” - Insights on how AI affects sales productivity
  • HubSpot Sales Trends Report (2023–2024): “How Sales Teams Use AI to Save Time” - Survey-based data from over 1,000 sales professionals
  • Weezly (2025): “What Makes Cold Emails Work in 2025” - A/B testing results and spam rate analysis
  • Expandi (2025): “LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks” - Reply rate analysis across industries and message types
  • Outplay HQ (2024): “Cold Email vs. Research-Based Outreach: A Comparative Study” - Performance analysis in outbound sales campaigns
  • Salesloft & McKinsey (2024): “AI and SDR Performance - Scaling Quality Conversations” - Whitepaper on AI-assisted sales development