The Real Reason Your Pipeline Is Stalling — And How Omni-Channel Fixes It — Michael Maximoff

Cold outreach effectiveness requires multi-channel strategy after email response rates declined from 8% to 1-2% between 2021 and 2023. This roundtable analyzes the Belkins Cold Outreach Benchmark Report 2025 covering 16.5 million cold emails, 20 million LinkedIn attempts, and 5 million cold calls. Learn how adding LinkedIn to email improves results by 25%, adding calls increases performance another 20%, and why modern B2B pipeline building requires 60-80 touchpoints per prospect. Discover frameworks for unifying inbound and outbound SDR activities under one pipeline with shared ICP, unified CRM systems, and hybrid metrics measuring pipeline quality over volume.
 

Michael Maximoff

He is a co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Belkins, one of the most reviewed appointment setting agencies in the United States. With 10 years at Belkins, he has built expertise across sales, marketing, and client services, and also co-founded Folderly, a SaaS platform focused on email deliverability and warm-up. He co-authored the Cold Outreach Benchmark 2025 report analyzing over 16.5 million cold emails and 20 million LinkedIn outreach attempts.

Transcript

Kawal: Hello.
Kawal: Welcome to the next episode of our roundtable series, Ops in Motion.
Kawal: Today, we have Michael Maximoff joining us from Belkins.
Kawal: We’ll be discussing the Cold Outreach Benchmark 2025 report by Belkins and Friends.
Kawal: The goal of this report was to understand the current effectiveness of cold outreach across channels like email, LinkedIn, and calls – how it has evolved over time, and what high performers are actually doing differently.
Kawal: The report analyzes data from approximately 16.5 million cold emails, over 20 million LinkedIn outreach attempts, and more than 5 million cold calls across multiple partners.
Kawal: I think Belkins did a great job summarizing such a massive data set.
Kawal: It’s not easy to collect this kind of data, put it all together, and then extract meaningful insights. It’s truly impressive work.
Kawal: So, Michael, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background?
Michael: Absolutely.
Michael: First of all, Kawal, thank you for having me.
Michael: I’m really excited about this conversation, and I’m glad you chose the benchmark report as the topic because it contains a lot of valuable insights that people can genuinely learn from.
Michael: I’m one of the founders and currently the Chief Growth Officer at Belkins.
Michael: We started the company about 10 years ago, and over the years we’ve grown to become one of the most reviewed appointment-setting agencies in the United States—and one of the most successful globally—according to Clutch and other review platforms.
Michael: I started my career in sales and then transitioned into running the business. As an executive, you obviously wear multiple hats.
Michael: Over time, we realized that appointment setting, SDR work, and pipeline building are deeply connected to marketing. So I taught myself marketing and ran our marketing team as Chief Marketing Officer for several years.
Michael: When you’re spending millions of dollars on marketing, you really need to understand what you’re doing. That pushed me to go deep into the details. Eventually, I transitioned into working more closely with our customers, helping build playbooks that integrate marketing, sales, and client success.
Michael: That’s essentially what Belkins stands for today. We don’t just wear a sales hat or a marketing hat—we aim to create fully integrated programs that align acquisition, marketing, sales, and client experience.
Kawal: Thanks for the introduction, Michael.
Kawal: I completely agree – sales, marketing, and customer success are deeply interconnected. In today’s environment, organizations really need these functions to work in synergy and stay aligned.
Kawal: I’m glad to hear that Belkins is strongly focused on that alignment.
Kawal: I’ve gone through the Cold Outreach Benchmark Report 2025, and one thing that stood out was the shift toward fewer touches and more personalization.
Kawal: How are marketing teams adapting their outreach strategies based on these benchmarks? What trends are you seeing across organizations?
Michael: That’s a great question.
Michael: We built our company around being really strong at cold email and cold outreach. We even spun off our own SaaS platform, Folderly, to help with deliverability and warm-up.
Michael: That approach helped us scale significantly. But over the years, email became much more complex, and we started seeing declining results.
Michael: We tracked open rates, response rates, and engagement rates, and starting around 2021, we noticed a consistent decline.
Michael: Eventually, we stopped focusing on open rates altogether because they were no longer reliable.
Michael: Even response and engagement rates kept dropping.
Michael: By 2023, it became critical for us to change our playbook.
Michael: Engagement rates that used to average around 8% dropped to 1–2%.
Michael: That’s nearly a fivefold decline.
Michael: So we started analyzing what our best customers were doing and testing additional channels alongside email.
Michael: What we found was that adding LinkedIn to email improved performance by about 25%.
Michael: Adding calling as a third channel – especially following engagement signals – improved results by another 20%.
Michael: When you add paid channels, conferences, webinars, and trade shows, performance increases even further.
Michael: The key insight was that success isn’t just about leads, tools, or messaging templates anymore.
Michael: There’s simply too much noise, and attention spans are incredibly short.
Michael: Based on our data, it now takes anywhere from 60 to 80 touchpoints for a prospect to move from not knowing you to being ready to do business with you.
Michael: Traditionally, SDRs relied heavily on sales-only playbooks – vemails and calls.
Michael: But if SDR efforts aren’t integrated with marketing, and if marketing isn’t focused on brand-building, content, and nurturing, you end up with low-intent leads.
Michael: We experienced this firsthand.
Michael: Even when our emails performed better than average, many prospects liked the messaging but had no real buying intent.
Michael: That’s when we shifted to a full-funnel, omnichannel approach.
Michael: It takes more time, but prospects are better nurtured.
Michael: They move through awareness, consideration, and activation stages before speaking with sales.
Michael: As a result, sales cycles are shorter, and meetings convert into opportunities at a much higher rate.
Michael: That insight led us to collaborate with multiple platforms and partners, combine our data, and publish benchmarks that reflect what actually works today.
Kawal: That makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate the effort that went into gathering and analyzing all that data.
Kawal: Multi-channel outreach is essential.
Kawal: You can’t just send an email and expect someone to buy a product or service they barely know about.
Kawal: There needs to be human interaction – LinkedIn conversations, calls, meetings – so prospects can understand the value more clearly.
Kawal: With that in mind, what are the advantages of combining inbound and outbound SDR outreach into a single, unified pipeline?
Michael: Inbound leads still need qualification.
Michael: Whether they come from forms, webinars, or content, someone has to turn interest into real opportunities – and that’s typically the SDR’s role.
Michael: Automation helps – we use Chili Piper to route inbound leads based on budget, industry, and other parameters – but automation only gets you about 70–80% of the way there.
Michael: SDRs are still critical for handling edge cases, reducing friction, and preventing no-shows.
Michael: The issue is that inbound and outbound efforts are often disconnected.
Michael: Marketing runs webinars and events, while SDRs focus only on follow-ups or cold outreach.
Michael: When we started integrating SDRs into marketing conversations – using webinars, conferences, and content as part of the outreach playbook – everything changed.
Michael: Marketing saw higher engagement, sales got better-quality leads, and pipeline quality improved.
Michael: Today, when we work with customers, it doesn’t matter whether the budget comes from sales or marketing.
Michael: We bring everyone together around one CRM, one ICP, one buying journey, and shared goals.
Michael: That alignment makes execution far more effective.
Kawal: I completely agree.
Kawal: Messaging and coordination across teams are critical.
Kawal: I’ve seen situations where marketing promotes a webinar, but sales have no idea it’s happening.
Kawal: That creates confusion and damages trust with prospects.
Kawal: Alignment is no longer optional – it’s essential.
Michael: Exactly.
Michael: Historically, SDRs were treated like call centers – just dialing numbers or sending sequences.
Michael: But when SDRs are integrated into growth and marketing conversations, they can build relationships, not just book meetings.
Michael: That’s how you flip the funnel and drive real engagement.
Kawal: Once SDRs are embedded into marketing, how should organizations evaluate cost and performance? Should they use traditional marketing metrics, or a hybrid approach?
Michael: Pipeline should always be the core success metric.
Michael: Beyond that, you need to understand conversion rates, deal size, sales cycles, and penetration within your ideal customer list.
Michael: Instead of chasing volume, focus on engaging deeply with a defined set of ideal accounts.
Michael: You also track cost per opportunity and aim to optimize it quarter over quarter.
Michael: Engagement rate is another important metric – positive responses versus total responses. If 40–50% of responses are constructive, you know you’re targeting the right ICP with the right message.
Michael: Ultimately, all metrics should roll up into pipeline health, efficiency, and scalability.
Kawal: That’s a comprehensive approach – a true hybrid of sales and marketing metrics.
Michael: If you had to pick one insight from the report that stood out most to you, what would it be?
Kawal: The biggest takeaway for me was how effective coordinated multi-channel outreach can be.
Kawal: Many organizations use email, LinkedIn, and calls – but without a real strategy tying them together.
Kawal: Tools don’t always talk to each other, metrics are disconnected, and teams operate in silos.
Kawal: Outreach needs to be viewed as one unified motion, not separate channels.
Kawal: When systems, messaging, and feedback loops are aligned, performance improves significantly.
Kawal: Some organizations are moving in this direction, but for many, it’s still a work in progress.
Michael: You’re absolutely right. I agree 100%. Thank you for sharing that perspective.
Kawal: This has been a great discussion.
Kawal: I highly recommend our audience read the Cold Outreach Benchmark Report 2025 by Belkins and Friends.
Kawal: Thank you, Michael, for joining us today. It was a pleasure hosting you.
Michael: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the conversation.