Nick Abraham on Growing Lead Bird Into a 7-Figure Cold Email Agency
Nick Abraham runs Lead Bird, a B2B lead generation agency, and is involved in several cold email software products. At 23, he joined Michael to talk about what turned sales around for the agency, why bigger clients get better results, and how to land them when you work on a performance basis. Nick also gets honest about running several companies at once, why SaaS is harder than it looks, and how Lead Bird finds its own prospects with cold email.
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Topics covered
- How Lead Bird and Nick's software products fit together
- Why social proof made sales easier
- Why bigger brands get better outbound results
- Structuring pay per lead deals for large companies
- What Nick learned from SaaS and running several companies
- Personal brand vs outbound for his products
- How Lead Bird targets its own prospects
Key takeaways
- Social proof is what made sales easier for Nick. Get your first five video testimonials, and make sure they're from legitimate companies.
- Many prospects have been burned by lead gen agencies before, so trust and credibility are what set you apart.
- Clients with a real brand get better outbound results, because prospects already know them.
- Large clients aren't harder to close, but the sales cycle is longer and you need to structure deals so procurement accepts them.
- A trial with a big account at barely profitable can be worth it if it leads to a long-term client.
- Running several companies at once is hard. Nick says he'd be further ahead if he had focused only on the agency.
- If he did SaaS again, Nick would choose an enterprise sales motion over product-led growth, which brings low-paying users and churn.
Show notes
🐦 One agency, several tools
When friends ask what he does, Nick says he runs "a couple of computer software companies", because they wouldn't know what SaaS means. In practice, he runs Lead Bird, his B2B lead gen agency, plus an AI personalization tool. He's also a partner in tools for email warming, email sending, catch-all verification and LinkedIn lead scraping. They all grew out of what Lead Bird was doing manually, like writing first lines and verifying catch-all emails.
Lead Bird came first, almost three years before this interview. Nick admits he got shiny object syndrome and thought SaaS was the next play, then found it far harder and less glamorous than people make it seem. He says he's better built for running an agency, and the agency had been his main focus for the past three to six months.
⭐ Social proof changed the sales process
Michael asks what separates Lead Bird from people who spend years trying to get an agency off the ground. Nick says sales was extremely hard for him, and what changed it, especially in the three months before the interview, was social proof. That means getting great results, getting clients on video interviews about those results, collecting G2 reviews, and putting all of it on the company LinkedIn page and website.
Nick has 15 video testimonials on his site and a 5 out of 5 rating on G2. Combined with a performance-based offer, he says, "who's gonna say no to that offer?" His one regret is not learning this earlier. Michael adds that most of his own clients have already worked with two or three lead gen agencies, so trust is what sets you apart. Nick's favorite testimonial comes from a client whose earlier agencies got nothing from the same list and copy Lead Bird used.
“biggest thing I could advise you on is get those first five videos, make them actually legit”
Nick Abraham, 4:00
🏢 Bigger brands, better results
Both have found that larger companies are easier to get results for. Nick says having a brand people can Google and find quickly has a huge impact on outbound results. He still has one or two very small clients that don't get the best results, sometimes with a landing page that's "literally just a logo". Big companies, some of them publicly traded, pay more and get responses more easily because their market already knows them.
Michael's observation is that his best clients all have a phone number on their website, since it means they have the budget for someone to answer the phone. Both also enjoy the education that comes with big clients. Nick has never had a corporate job, so working with marketing and demand gen directors showed him how much more political and budget-driven those relationships are.
🤝 How to land large clients
Nick says closing big companies isn't hard, but the sales cycle is longer and the deals need the right structure. Procurement departments hate variable expenses, so a pure pay per lead model can stall a deal. They also need to trust you with sensitive data, like their do-not-contact lists.
His advice is to keep following up and to accept a trial phase, even at barely profitable. A large account can grow into a client paying six figures, and landing one makes landing the next much easier. That's a better bet than offering performance deals to a brand new agency that just started.
“once you land one of those accounts it makes it so easy to go get those other accounts”
Nick Abraham, 8:54
💻 What SaaS taught him
Asked whether his software companies are built to sell, Nick is candid. Running multiple companies is "insanely hard". Without a technical background or a great development team, building products is hard, especially when they push against Google's and LinkedIn's terms of service, where there's no documentation to follow.
SaaS also has churn. He says a product-led growth model means jumping on support calls for someone paying nine dollars a month who will churn anyway. If he did SaaS again, he'd use an enterprise sales motion and collect more upfront. He uses Smartlead for sending now rather than his own sending product, prefers simple products with a light back end, and wants to shut some products down.
For one of his products, he says about 80% of the year's revenue came from six customers. One came from his personal brand and network, and the other five from cold email, even though most users come from content.
“if I was just focused on the agency for the last three years, and I wish I did, I'd be much further ahead than I am right now”
Nick Abraham, 13:00
🎯 How Lead Bird finds its own clients
Nick says fulfillment felt really good for the first time in three years, so he was getting ready to go into full sales mode, with plans for a cold caller, a sales team and multiple closers. In April, Lead Bird added five to seven thousand people to its own campaigns. The goal for the coming months was 30,000 to 50,000.
On targeting, he still goes after agencies as low-hanging fruit, but he also likes demand gen and head of growth titles, filtered to B2B companies. One campaign that "prints" for them scrapes the followers of competitors' LinkedIn company pages and emails them. His long-term goal is to make Lead Bird a staple name in lead gen, up there with names like Belkins.
About Nick Abraham
Nick Abraham is the founder of Lead Bird, a B2B lead generation agency he started almost three years before this interview. Lead Bird works on a performance basis, delivering leads for clients on a pay per lead model.
Alongside the agency, Nick runs or is a partner in several tools that grew out of what Lead Bird was doing manually, covering AI personalization, email warming, email sending, catch-all verification and LinkedIn lead scraping. He was 23 at the time of recording and shares content as Nick Abraham 12 on YouTube, X and LinkedIn.
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