Scaling Beyond Agencies & Tradeshows with Outbound Automation

This B2B hardware and SaaS company specializes in queuing solutions designed to streamline customer flow in physical locations. Their technology helps businesses reduce wait times, improve service efficiency, and enhance the in-person experience.

The company faced a major bottleneck in its growth strategy. 100% of its leads were generated either through an outsourced outbound agency or from expensive, labor-intensive trade shows. This approach was not scalable — agency costs were high, trade shows required extensive resources, and neither method provided predictable, long-term lead generation.

The outsourced agency was costing them thousands per month with inconsistent results and limited transparency into the outreach process. Trade shows, while effective for relationship building, required weeks of preparation, travel costs, and booth investments — often yielding only a handful of qualified conversations per event. The company needed a way to generate steady, predictable pipeline between trade show events without increasing their spend on external agencies.

To help the company establish a self-sustaining outbound system, Prospect AI implemented a fully managed outreach strategy that could run continuously without agency dependency.

The approach was built in three phases:

• Phase 1 — Infrastructure: Built a scalable outbound infrastructure, setting up dedicated sending domains and email accounts with full SPF/DKIM/DMARC configuration to ensure high deliverability from day one.
• Phase 2 — Targeting: Identified decision-makers at government facilities, hospitals, banks, and retail locations who managed customer flow and queue management. The AI also identified and engaged with competitor LinkedIn followers — people who already showed interest in similar solutions.
• Phase 3 — Execution: Launched personalized outreach campaigns across email and LinkedIn, with messaging that addressed specific pain points: long customer wait times, staffing inefficiencies, and poor visitor experience metrics.

A key differentiator in the strategy was the competitor targeting approach. By identifying prospects who already followed or engaged with competing queuing solution providers on LinkedIn, Prospect AI focused outreach on buyers who were already educated on the category — significantly shortening the sales cycle.

This eliminated their reliance on agencies and trade shows while giving them a repeatable and scalable way to generate leads in-house, operating autonomously month after month.

By shifting to an automated, AI-powered outbound strategy, the company now secures 5 high-quality sales conversations per month — without relying on outsourced agencies or costly trade show events.

Key outcomes from the engagement:

• 5 qualified conversations per month from cold outreach alone
• Complete independence from their previous agency — contract terminated after the first quarter
• Reduced cost per lead by over 60% compared to combined agency + trade show spend
• Continuous pipeline generation — outreach runs 24/7 without manual intervention
• Competitor displacement — several deals came from prospects who were evaluating competing solutions

With a consistent pipeline in place, the company can now predictably scale lead generation while keeping costs under control. Trade shows have shifted from being their primary lead source to a complementary channel for deepening relationships that started through automated outreach.