Cutting The Cost of Acquiring Customers in Half with Brandon Healey

For years, conventional wisdom has said that outbound sales works in B2B but not B2C. The reason? Email. In business sales, you can source and validate work emails. In consumer sales, personal emails are difficult to find and even harder to verify, often leading to spam filters.

Brandon Healy, VP of Sales & Growth at Hemlane, took on this challenge head-on.

Instead of relying on traditional email-driven outbound, his team went all-in on cold calling. After six months of relentless iteration, refining lead sourcing, optimizing scripts, and even adjusting commission models, they now generate 10% of their monthly closed revenue from cold outbound alone.

Why Cold Email Fails in B2C (And Why Cold Calling Works)

The biggest challenge in B2C outbound is data quality. While tools like Clay have made personal email sourcing easier, it’s still unreliable. In Hemlane’s case, many users signed up with personal emails like “hockeystar2623@gmail.com” or created duplicate accounts, making email-based outreach ineffective.

Instead of fighting this battle, they pivoted. They built a repeatable cold-calling process that drives meaningful revenue by investing in high-quality phone number data and refining their call strategies.

Why Freemium Fails More Often Than It Works

Offering a free version of your product seems like a great way to drive adoption. It provides a broader reach, more inbound leads, and an easy entry point for future customers. But in reality, freemium often attracts the wrong audience: users looking for free tools, not those willing to pay for a solution.

When Hemlane, a rental property management platform, shifted its focus from free sign-ups to high-intent customers, the results were dramatic:

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) dropped 50% (from $2,700 to $1,300).
Sign-ups fell from 300 per week to 100, but…
Revenue grew by 20% despite fewer leads.

The Missing Piece in Scaling

Most companies obsess over product-market fit (PMF vs. GTM), but scaling successfully requires something just as crucial: message-market fit.

Even the best products will struggle without clear, compelling messaging that attracts the right buyers. A flood of leads means nothing if they aren’t converting into paying customers.

This became obvious when Hemlane realized its massive marketing budget was not translating into revenue. Although its lead pipeline was full, the wrong people were signing up: low-intent users unwilling to pay.

Cut the Waste, Focus on the Right Buyers

Instead of doubling down on ineffective ads, they did what most companies hesitate to do:

Shut off ad spend and reworked every piece of marketing.
Refined messaging to focus on premium, high-intent customers.
Rebuilt targeting around their most valuable users.

Lead volume dropped once they made these changes, but revenue increased, proving that fewer, better-qualified leads consistently outperform mass acquisition.

The Power of Pain-Driven Outreach

Knowing who to contact is important in outbound sales, but knowing when they need you is the real game-changer.

Instead of casting a wide net, successful teams focus on identifying prospects at the right moment of pain. That’s where data-driven targeting comes in.

Moving Beyond Basic Lists

Traditional prospecting relies on static lists: who owns what, where they’re located, and basic firmographic details. However, the most effective outbound strategies go further by integrating real-time signals that indicate urgency.

For example, property ownership records tell you who the landlord is. But what really matters is:

Are they struggling to find a tenant?
Are they dealing with maintenance issues?
Are they currently facing an eviction?

These trigger points are often publicly available, but few teams build systems to leverage them at scale. Those who do can pinpoint the prospects most likely to convert, reducing wasted effort and increasing efficiency.

Speed Matters

With highly targeted lists, volume isn’t the priority. Speed is. If a prospect has a pressing need, the first vendor to reach them has a massive advantage.

Instead of cycling through leads repeatedly, high-performing outbound teams:

Call once or twice and move on (rather than hitting leads 5+ times like in B2B).
Maintain a constant flow of fresh data to avoid overworking old lists.
Continuously test and refine data sources to ensure accuracy.

The Right Tech Stack Matters

For call-heavy outbound teams, the dialer is the most critical tool. Even small inefficiencies, like a 1-2 second delay before the call connects, can kill conversion rates.

One team saw its connection rates jump from 7% to 20% just by switching dialers. At peak performance, they hit 30% + connection rates, meaning almost one in three dials resulted in a live conversation.

When dialing at this level, traditional B2B playbooks (Build your personalization at scale playbook) don’t apply:

✅ Lower call attempts per lead: Instead of hitting the same contact 5+ times, reps move on after 1-2 passes.

✅ Massive daily volume: At a 30% connect rate, reps made 100-150 calls daily and still spent all day in live conversations.

When Texting Works (and When It Doesn’t)

In some industries, text-based follow-ups are game-changers. However, in B2C, personal contact numbers carry risks.

✅ High engagement: Prospects are likelier to respond to a quick text than an email.

❌ Spam concerns: Carriers flag excessive messaging, making it harder to reach leads in the long run.

For now, this team sticks to fast, high-volume dialing. When the connect rate is this high, efficiency beats automation.

A Cold Call Script That Works in High-Volume

With hundreds of dials daily, cold callers don’t have the luxury of slow, relationship-driven conversations. Every second matters. The right script doesn’t just engage. It filters, qualifies, and moves the right prospects into deeper conversations without wasted effort.

Flipping the Cold Call Formula

Traditional cold calling starts with discovery. Asking open-ended questions to uncover pain points. That doesn’t work in high-volume B2C outbound, where attention spans are even shorter than in B2B. Instead, this team flips the script:

1️⃣ Permission-Based Opener: “Hey, this is a cold call. I know I caught you at a bad time…” (Acknowledging reality lowers resistance.)

2️⃣ Objection Diffusion: Instead of waiting for pushback, they preemptively eliminate common objections:

“We’re not looking to buy your property.”

“We’re not a traditional property manager.”

“We’re not here to sell you something irrelevant.”

3️⃣ Immediate Differentiation: Once objections are neutralized, the focus shifts straight to value, what makes their offer unique, and why it’s relevant to this specific person.

This approach filters out bad fits early while making it easier for the right prospects to decide. It’s not about pushing harder. It’s about making the decision easier.

Adding Personality for Retention

Standing out in cold outreach isn’t just about what you say but how you say it. This team takes an unconventional approach by leaning into cultural charm to break through skepticism:

When calling U.S. prospects, they exaggerate their Canadian accents, turning regional stereotypes into an instant rapport-building tool.
Humor and self-awareness make calls more conversational, cutting through the typical robotic sales pitch.
This “human” element doesn’t just get a laugh. It makes calls more memorable, increasing the chance of continued engagement.

Speed and Precision Over Persuasion

With a 1.2X call pass-through rate, meaning they rarely dial a number more than once, this strategy isn’t about persuading every prospect. It’s about:

Filtering fast: If they’re not interested, they move on. No excessive follow-ups.
Maximizing qualified conversations: Calls are structured to surface engagement within seconds.
Adjusting on the fly: They increase relevance without wasting time by tailoring messaging to the most likely pain points.

Instead of pushing through objections, they cut straight to clarity. Every call has a purpose: find the right person at the right time with the right need, or move on.

Conclusion

B2C outbound works. But only with precise targeting, fast execution, and sharp messaging. Hemlane proved that with the right data, timing, and high-volume dialing, cold calls can drive 10% of revenue with a small team.

The takeaway? Outbound succeeds when you reach the right people before they start looking.

CTAs

With Hemlane, you can simplify rental management. Find tenants, automate tasks, and effortlessly handle repairs. Learn more or connect with Brandon Healy on LinkedIn.

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