Thibault what’s your backstory?

I’m a French guy who grew up in Toulon, in the south of France. Early on, I worked as a door-to-door salesman, selling to vineyards (yep, the dream). Later, I moved to Asia as an exchange student for my MBA program.

I’ve worked in many different types of companies, public, startups, pre-IPO and I was always focused on Sales and/or B2B Marketing. Over the years, I noticed that a lot of companies didn’t have clear systems to generate leads beyond inbound channels. Given my experience building outbound systems, I decided to test the waters.

I set myself up on Fiverr for a while, and after two quarters, things really took off. I realized most companies placed a high value on lead generation, so I started an agency on the side of my corporate job. Once we had enough runway, I quit. Sixteen months later, here we are, with a team of seven and over 50 clients served.

What does Reachly do, and how did you come up with the idea?

We are a Clay-gency (in simple terms, a lead gen agency) that helps B2B businesses around the world generate more conversations with the people who matter, so they can grow their sales pipeline.

We do this using a stack of best-in-class tools like Clay, Smartlead, HeyReach, and many more to power inbound marketing, outbound marketing, or revenue operations. Our work covers everything from cold email to multichannel outreach, and even cold calling.

How did you acquire your first 10 clients, and what strategies worked?

To be honest, it was mostly through my existing network at first. I had a decent following on LinkedIn (10k+), which allowed me to get started with people I was already connected with.

Once that slowed down and my LinkedIn content started bringing diminishing returns, I shifted focus more toward outreach. We later expanded into running ads, working with a couple of partners, and using directory listings for referral traffic.

Lately, I’ve been doing more targeted outreach and exploring collaborations to reach new audiences and keep the momentum going.

What feedback did your first clients give, and how did it help improve your services?

In the early days, we had a very basic approach to lead generation; the results were very average, and I realized that we needed something much more customized.

Many people would complain about the fact that we had no normalization, very little to no customization in messaging, and average success rates. That's when I came across Clay, which completely changed the way we do Outbound marketing, allowing us to fully customize our approach one-to-one.

What steps did you take to ensure your service met the needs of your target clients?

A lot of it happens pre-onboarding. We make sure our client’s target market is big enough and that their offering is something that can be sold through cold outreach.

We used to say yes to pretty much anyone who needed lead generation services, but we’ve since changed our approach drastically. Now, we only take on about 10–20% of the companies we speak to.

That’s simply because we want to keep those companies with us as long as possible, and there are certain criteria we need to tick off our list in order to do so.

Which channels have been most effective for reaching clients, and how did you discover them?

LinkedIn, LinkedIn, and LinkedIn. Jokes aside, I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for this platform.

That being said, if anyone is looking to scale and/or test their offerings, cold email is probably the fastest way to validate that. Which is one of our main acquisition channels at the moment.

What makes Reachly unique in a competitive market?

The main things are that we do multi-channel (LinkedIn Direct Message + Cold calling), whereas most of our competitors do cold email only.

We also have the option to embed our own SDR in your campaigns, so that we're always replying to leads as fast as possible, nurturing them to try our best to book them on a meeting with our client's sales team.

Additionally, we also offer LinkedIn Content creation services, so we help our clients get the best of both worlds (inbound AND outbound leads).

How do you see B2B lead generation evolving, and how is Reachly adapting?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already present in most of the campaigns and will only play a more important role for marketing campaigns as years go by, but as I often tell my team, AI output is only as good as the input.

So, I think companies that will be able to implement very complex systems, using AI with very good context, are going to be staying ahead of the curve.

How has AI changed how you approach outbound sales and lead generation?

1000%, it's in every single Clay table we run for our clients. Whether it's to validate the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), the fit for the client's service, to normalize a name, company name, or job title, or to write custom {ice_breakers}.

AI allows us to get much more granular information about a lead and a company, and have an approach related to that person's pain point based on the prior. It would take a lot more time to do what we do at scale if it weren't for AI.

How do you balance automation with personalization in your outreach?

Sometimes simplicity works better than complexity, so it’s important to find a balance. In outreach, the only thing that truly matters is whether the message is easy to reply “yes” to, that’s the core goal of any campaign: generating a reply. Once that reply comes through, someone can then step in to manually nurture the conversation. For this reason, we keep our messaging very short, casual, and conversational, while still ensuring it’s relevant through enrichment signals or trigger events.

How do you balance running campaigns, managing clients, and scaling your business?

My team focuses on running our clients' campaigns, while I focus on scaling the business through content, marketing, and sales.

It's definitely not as smooth as I'm making it sound, but in theory, that's what I'm trying to implement. We also have a very clear target on where we're trying to take the business, so it helps keep things aligned.

What's your top tip for building trust and converting leads into clients?

Content, more specifically, video content, as people feel like they know you already when they get on a call.

I'm now trying to post 1 to 4 times a week on LinkedIn to share valuable content that actually educates people on specific topics (around my lead gen expertise).

What are your plans for Reachly in the coming years?

We’re on our way to $1M ARR, which is a pretty big milestone we’re looking forward to. In addition, we’re scaling our LinkedIn ghostwriting and content design services, and I’m really excited about that too.

Aside from that, I’m also looking forward to seeing where the space goes with AI and all the new tools that keep coming out.

What key lessons from your previous roles helped shape how you built Reachly?

Agoda played the most important role in my career growth. I joined a BU (Business Unit) that operated like a startup and left it running like a Small/Medium Enterprise (SME). That’s definitely where I learned the most.

I learned to focus on activities that move the dial, the things that grow the business, instead of chasing “shiny objects.”

What specific tools, software, or resources have been essential in growing Reachly?

I would say Clay, Smartlead, HeyReach, and Apollo are the main ones. But within Clay, we use more than 30 APIs, including (Zenrows, Apify, RapidAPI, and all the email providers, etc.)

We also wouldn't function without the usual suspects: Notion, Slack, Stripe, etc.

Who are some experts or entrepreneurs you recommend for learning how to grow a business?

I’d highly recommend Adam Robinson from RB2B/Retention.com. He’s one of the pioneers in the “Build in Public” space and is a very successful and inspiring entrepreneur.

What advice do you have for founders looking to find the best channels to attract clients?

Test, test, and test. Look at what channels your direct competitors are using and what's getting them some engagement, then replicate.

No need to re-invent the wheel, but make sure that whatever you test, you've stuck to it long enough that you have sufficient evidence that it's not working before pivoting.

What drives you to do what you do?

To help businesses grow, we create something out of nothing with some of the coolest minds in Thailand, as well as utilize some of the world's most innovative technology.

Any quotes you live by?

There are only two outcomes in life: you either win or you learn.

Your links + socials

Thibault LinkedIn

Thibault Instagram