John Karsant

Founder and CEO @ LevelUp Leads, a Sales Development Agency

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Want to stand out as an SDR? It's simpler than you think.

- Be Accountable: Own your results, good or bad. It shows maturity and dedication.
- Be Coachable: Embrace guidance and be open to new strategies and approaches.
- Consistently ask for Feedback: It's the fastest way to improve and shows your commitment.

Your managers and your teammates will notice.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Everyone keeps asking me if AI is going to replace SDRs.
Same answer I've had for two years. No.

The teams winning right now aren't swapping reps for bots.

They're using AI to clear everything off the rep's plate that isn't a conversation.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Should it be acceptable to drink non-alcoholic beer at work?

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

SDRs treating rejection as a personal insult is partly why their pipeline is dry.

Most cold calls are going to end in resistance and that’s the reality of strangers interrupting people's day.

You fail more than you succeed. So does every top rep I've ever met.

In baseball you bat .300 and get paid millions.

Roger Federer, arguably one of the best tennis players of all time, only won 54% of the points he played on tour.

Your numbers will vary company to company but regardless of how well-known the company is, or how good your offer is, you're going to get more no's than yes's.

Know your math in order to hit your numbers.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Here's what you shouldn't do.

Invite people onto your podcast and then pitch them your product/services after you stop recording.

This happens way more than you'd expect.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

LinkedIn has been great to so many, but this won't be the first time you hear someone complain about LinkedIn.

Why am I being notified about people I don't know, who are commenting on posts from people I don't know?

Why so many of the same notifications as well?

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Most SDRs think the job is to pitch a meeting.

You pitch that meeting for you, and people will smell your commission breath.

The reps who get curious about the prospect's problems and get them to open up, are the ones leading their team's leaderboards.

This is what Dillon Tucker calls Killer Questions.

See the full episode here: https://t.co/kOscNNXtHx

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

The teams winning right now aren't swapping SDR for bots.

They're using AI to clear everything off the rep's plate that isn't a conversation.

Less list building, less account research, less CRM cleanup, less internal calls.

The problem is that many in-house team still have their SDR's eating up half their day doing exactly that.

Your SDRs are going to make the biggest impact right now talking to actual people and having conversations.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Most teams spin up some email sequences and call it outbound, yet wonder why their pipeline's dry.

Inboxes are flooded and people are barely reading your email. Skimming it at best.

Most teams avoid the phones because it's hard work.

When your rep actually calls, they stand out. A lot less noise and you get to have an actual conversation, leading to faster feedback on what's landing with your ICP.

Is it harder? Yes
More expensive? Yes
Uncomfortable? Most of the time

Does it require more bodies, tech stack and management? Yes

Be patient with the process and, make adjustments as you get market feedback, but stop overthinking it and get on the phones.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

One of the things I enjoy most about having guests on my podcast is hearing their story.

How did they break into sales?
How did they move from position to position and company to company?

Check out the full episode with Dillon Tucker here: https://t.co/jDZMyJSzJl

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

I started LevelUp Leads 5 years ago and it’s crazy to think about what it was like in the first year, all the ups and downs and how different the company is today vs then.

What started as a solo project in mid-2021 has become a 73 person team doing $6.5M annual run rate.

I’m extremely proud of my team and where we are today.

A few milestones:
Fully Bootstrapped from day 1
0→73 employees
$6.5M run rate
Built in-house software to give our clients full transparency into their campaigns
Hired a CEO coach to help guide me through uncharted waters
100% remote team
Multiple promotions and growth from within
Building out partnerships with publicly traded, global brands

One thing is for certain, it’s hard work and it’s not easy. The problems never end but more times than not, they are good problems, which makes it fun to solve.

Moving forward, we’re rolling out new services to our clients:
- SEO + AEO
- Google PPC
- LinkedIn + ABM

Your marketing engine sets the ceiling for your outbound results and you can’t rely on one channel and expect to see results.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

"Can we just hand this off and let the agency handle everything?"

I get why people ask. The market has spent years selling the idea that pipeline can run on autopilot.

Vendors say it to win the deal but it isn't true, and it definitely isn't true in 2026.

In my 10 years of watching outbound programs succeed, every single one needed both sides pulling their weight. Nobody was pointing fingers.

The agency and the company actually worked together, traded insights, and stayed honest with each other.

They both understood that building an SDR motion and real pipeline doesn't happen overnight.

The companies that win don't outsource responsibility.

They outsource execution and stay close to the process.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Yesterday the LevelUp Leads SDR team broke our internal record.

45 meetings booked for clients in a single day. 🔥

3 separate SDRs had 6 meetings booked each.

I talk a lot about how SDR work will humble you fast.

The difference yesterday wasn't a magic opener or some new hack.

It was the boring stuff done well:

Good lists
Good tone
Good coaching
Good reps willing to show up

Proud of this crew for trusting the process, staying coachable, and putting in the reps when no one's watching.

Consistency compounds and yesterday was proof.

Now back to work!

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

No one said cold calling was easy.

It can be intimidating, you get hung up on, and some days you don't book meetings.

...but it's still one of the best channels to build pipeline.

Roughly 50% of companies generate more than half of their pipeline from the phones.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

SDRs aren’t going anywhere.

AI isn’t replacing them, it’s helping them do their job better and it's helping them spend more time where it makes a bigger impact.

AI SDRs can’t cold call, it’s illegal in the USA and we should all be thankful.

We have discovery calls with prospects who question whether cold calling works and they’re shocked when we tell them that 80% of our booked meetings for our clients come from the phones.

There's a reason Chat GPT and Claude are hiring SDRs internally.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Outbound and cold calling don't work.

Close the department.

Don't go after the accounts you want to work with.

Wait for them to come to you.

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*No you shouldn't expect results like this for you and your company. This is less than one month of work so this is an outlier but sometimes campaigns can be a homerun right out of the gates.

DM me if you want to learn more about this strategy we implemented.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Is your sales leadership closing deals or running an SDR boot camp?
Recruiting. Interviewing. Onboarding. Coaching. Replacing the rep who left at month 4. Then doing it all again.
Most companies budget the salary line for the SDR but forget everything else, such as the tech stack costs as well as paying the manager who is spending all their time training.

Yes, I'm biased, but there is no denying that the true costs of building out an SDR program in-house require significant time and money and you'll likely run into a bunch of roadblocks along the way.

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

We added another free tool on the LevelUp Leads website.

Email Signature Generator

It has all the customization you could want for an email signature so it's branded to your company.

Enjoy!

[John Karsant @Jkarsant]

Intent data is overhyped.

Logically the best use case would be around products/services that have a long sales cycle since you are more likely to catch them while evaluating.

Short sales cycle and they’ve likely already made their decision by the time you reach out.