#169 · The Bus Stop Framework: How to CRUSH Cold Outreach
The best source is Sales Navigator (or Vain), which gets its data directly from LinkedIn; every lead source ultimately pulls from LinkedIn. Start at the source for fresh, optimized leads, even if it costs more.
Well, logically speaking, if you're searching LinkedIn for leads, you're accessing the same leads others scrape with Sales Navigator, so they aren't necessarily less saturated. You might customize outreach more than someone using AI. Beyond that, I'm experimenting with buying a big Bright Data list of about 100,000 contacts, which will be fun. You can also scrape data sources yourself—for example, if you're selling to MBA students, you could pull emails from a university directory like Stanford's, build a system to click through profiles and collect emails, and get details like their field of study. While those emails may not have high deliverability, the list is large and unsaturated. Creating your own list is the way to get truly unsaturated leads. Another approach is to email conference organizers or managers and ask for vendor lists; many smaller conferences will share them for free. You can then pitch to attendees by referencing the conference. The trade‑off is either paying for saturated, competitive lists or investing time to build your own differentiated list.
The Apollo scraper costs $120 per 1,000 leads; $39 in credits gets you ~32,500 leads, so you won’t exhaust a TAM of 40k‑150k marketing companies quickly. TAM isn’t a big concern—when one niche saturates, pivot to related niches (PPC, creative agencies, etc.) and your offer works the same.
Recruitment agencies are currently the best niche because they operate heavily on LinkedIn and email outreach, so a lead‑gen system feeds both candidate sourcing and employer sourcing. Digital‑marketing agencies, coaches, consultants, and service providers also work, but recruitment agencies give the highest ROI right now.
These days most people are using LeadsFinder, which costs about $1.50 per 1,000 leads with emails; there are a few newer similar tools popping up at around $1.70 per 1,000. Even though I don’t have an Apollo account (so I’m effectively out of credits), I’d just scrape using one of these alternative services—they’re plentiful on Apify, and you can also scrape other platforms. If you run out of Apollo credits, the same approach applies: use a lead‑scraping tool like LeadsFinder or another provider to build your lead list, then proceed with your outreach (e.g., Instantly) as usual.