How Aligned Built a Data + Engagement Machine to Convert 40%+ of All Cold Calls
As the leading customer collaboration platform, Aligned is transforming their go-to-market strategy with personalized sequences, triggered playbooks, and A/B testing. Discover how the Aligned sales team is achieving a 40% conversion rate on cold calls using Apollo.
About Aligned
Aligned is a top-tier customer collaboration platform designed to enhance communication and coordination between teams and clients. It offers tools for seamless interaction, project management, and real-time collaboration, helping businesses streamline their processes and improve client engagement.
- Industry: Customer collaboration and project management
- Company Size: 60 employees
- Location: United States
- Products:
The Company
When it comes to innovative solutions in B2B tech, Aligned isn’t just participating—they’re setting the pace.
With the leading customer collaboration software for sellers, featuring their digital sales room, mutual action plan, and revenue intelligence platform, Aligned is on a rapid growth path.
This potential drew Saad Khan to join as the Director of Sales, driven by the immense opportunity to expand the sales pipeline for a company fueled by premium content and a top-tier product.
“Aligned produces a wealth of content, and I saw the potential to transform that into more than just brand visibility—it could be a powerful pipeline generator,” Saad explains.
This is the story of how Saad brought this vision to life, building an all-in-one outbound engine using Apollo, and how Aligned’s sales team achieved over 40% conversion on cold calls, setting the stage for unlimited growth.
Building a generational GTM motion for a generational product
Before joining Aligned, Saad Khan served as the Head of Business Development at Dooly, where the sales team faced the challenge of managing a high volume of monthly sign-ups while struggling with activation issues—all while relying on ZoomInfo.
“We had purchased ZoomInfo, but it wasn’t capable of supporting the vision I had,” Saad recalls. “As a product-led growth company, we had a ton of product sign-ups, and I needed a way to automate all those tasks.”
So, when Saad transitioned to Aligned, he turned to Apollo to be the sales team’s central hub for data and automated outreach. His first step was to create a customized dashboard that offered a quick view of email and call performance, job-change alerts, and team tasks.
Apollo was designed to be “an extension” of all the work his reps were doing, with this data hub providing instant insights into their successes and areas for improvement. “Tracking email opens and engagement on Apollo’s dashboard saves me and my team loads of time,” Saad notes.
He then built three robust outbound Sequences—pre-built campaigns that deliver personalized messaging across multiple channels and automate touchpoints to reach exponentially more leads. One Sequence targeted cold outbound prospects, another focused on product sign-ups, and a third was tailored for event and webinar leads.
This approach provided a solid foundation. “I wanted to establish that baseline,” Saad explains. “We needed to get some people in there to start testing and refining our messaging.”
Finally, Saad integrated Aligned’s robust inbound lead pipeline into Apollo, centralizing all leads in one place.
“If you configure Apollo correctly, all that data feeds back into the CRM, including activation failures or product usage metrics. That’s crucial for a company like Aligned, which is building out its product-led growth (PLG) strategy.”
Aligned then created an “inbound to outbound” Apollo Play that captures all incoming demo requests in their CRM. Based on the rules Saad established, Apollo automatically prospects into those companies, setting reps up for success.
“I love that everything is unified in one platform,” Saad says. “I don’t need to evaluate other tools or coordinate with multiple CSMs and stakeholders. It’s all streamlined and connected.”
A sales tool that grows and learns alongside your team
With a fully developed outbound playbook in place, the sales team was set to refine and execute.
Saad, like all great sales managers, empowers his AEs to make the outbound process their own. His team is encouraged to clone any sequence from their library and personalize the messaging to match their unique style.
They also run A/B tests to experiment with different messaging, discovering which value propositions resonate best with their target audience.
Saad shares an example of a test he conducted using a value-driven closing line:
“P.S. In my next email, I’ll send you a screenshot of how {{competitor}} is doing the above…”
(And yes, he actually follows up with the screenshot in the next email).
"Most recipients know they are a part of a sequence and when we A/B test, we like to play into that. Apollo lets us test and humanize that process" - Saad Khan — Director of Sales and Business Enablement at Aligned
Saad attributes his sales team’s outbound success to the quality of data they have on high-value prospects.
With access to a comprehensive, verified database and the tools to act on it, Saad and his team are converting over 40% of all cold calls into meetings.
The process is straightforward…
Saad closely monitors high-priority leads, such as daily website visitors and demo requesters, feeding them into targeted Apollo campaigns.
These campaigns begin with an email and a personalized video on day one, introducing Aligned and showcasing how they can simplify complex deals. Shortly after, reps follow up with a call.
“By the time we reach out, they already know us and understand the problems we solve,” Saad explains.
He views each interaction with a prospect as “charging their battery,” and once it’s fully charged, they make the push for a phone sale.
“Apollo helps us turn data into action…we live and breathe in the tool,” Saad says, emphasizing the platform’s role in their success.
Start Growing With Apollo.io Today
Apollo.io offers a comprehensive suite of tools, including lead generation, data enrichment, and multi-channel engagement, to streamline your sales process and drive business growth.
