The difference between outbound activity and outbound traction
Mercana went from two or three meetings a month to 15 scheduled in the first 30 days, with a 100% show rate and 60% of held meetings turning into pilots. Nine meetings came from cold calls on a new 2,000-lead list; six came from leads Mercana had already worked and never converted.
About Mercana
An AI customer intelligence platform for direct-to-consumer brands. It enriches a brand’s customer data and surfaces the VIPs hiding in it — influencers and executives — so teams can reach them directly.
Who we reached
Growth, e-commerce, lifecycle, CRM and influencer leaders at e-commerce and consumer brands, plus founders and GMs at smaller brands.
The bar Mercana set
Outbound was producing two to three meetings a month. At Mercana’s deal sizes, four to six a month covers the engagement — so that became the bar for month one.
Where the meetings came from
Fifteen meetings, from two places: nine from cold calls, and six from leads Mercana had already worked but never converted. Both depended less on how much outreach went out, and more on how it was done.
Volume sets the floor — 9 meetings
A list of roughly 2,000 marketing, lifecycle and influencer leads, worked by a dedicated calling team. That produced 2,200+ dials, around 220 live connects — about 10% of dials — and nine meetings. That alone cleared the breakeven bar.
But volume only creates the chance of a conversation. What happens during the call, and after it, decides whether that conversation becomes a meeting.
Follow-up is where meetings get made — 6 meetings
Mercana had a pool of past leads: people who had engaged before and never converted. Most teams write these off. We built a follow-up structure around them, with planned touchpoints and a clear reason behind each one, and found a way back into those conversations.
Six of the 15 meetings came from there — 40% of the month’s result, from leads that already existed. That work happens one intentional touch at a time, not in an automation that runs and waits.
| What good follow-up looks like | |
|---|---|
| Planned, not improvised | Touchpoints mapped before the first one goes out, so no lead slips because someone forgot. |
| A reason for every touch | Each message brings something new — a relevant angle or a specific question. Never just checking in. |
| Built on the last conversation | Every follow-up picks up from what was actually said, so it reads like a continuation. |
The pitch decides who shows up — 100% show rate
When a prospect pushed back, the calling team asked what would make it not work, rather than moving on. That one question turned firm no’s, including price objections, into booked meetings.
It also kept qualification honest. People booked because the conversation addressed their concern, not because they were talked past it. Hence the show rate.
“We’d worked with an agency before and it never turned into real meetings, so we genuinely weren’t sure outbound was a channel for us. StudioGTM quickly showed it was possible, and that it was the details and the how that mattered.”
“What we’ve appreciated as much as the results is watching how they think — every step of the process made sense, and it paid for itself almost immediately.”
Daniel LeeFounder, MercanaWhat the calls taught us
A clear pattern showed up in who converted. Directors who own consumer data directly saw the value quickly. Contacts one step removed from that data disqualified fast.
Knowing that lets calling time go where a yes is actually possible. It only shows up when someone is listening to the calls, not just counting them.
The numbers in full
| Channel | Detail | Meetings |
|---|---|---|
| Cold outreach | ~2,000 leads built, 2,200+ dials, ~220 live connects | 9 |
| Re-engagement | Past leads, structured follow-up with planned touchpoints | 6 |
| Together | 100% show rate · 60% of meetings held turned into pilots | 15 |
Figures cover Mercana’s first 30 days. The engagement is ongoing.
The transferable lesson. Forty per cent of the result came from leads that already existed. Before buying more data, it is worth asking what is sitting unworked in your CRM — we wrote about that in why your dead leads outperform your next list.