Two hours to reach one executive. Then 60 seconds
Jan-Willem van Dam is an International Sales Consultant at Agent4sales, a B2B sales and marketing consultancy based in Arnhem, Netherlands. Founded in 2017 with 1-10 employees, Agent4sales provides customized market research and outbound lead generation for medium-sized businesses.
Jan brings 20+ years of lead generation experience to the work. His primary responsibility: calling and booking meetings with top decision-makers in the Netherlands.
Not middle management. Not gatekeepers. CXOs and CEOs at medium-sized Dutch companies.
That targeting specificity creates unique challenges. You’re not just finding any contact. You’re finding the one person who makes buying decisions. The executive whose time is most protected. The decision-maker who’s hardest to reach.
Pre-COVID, that challenge was manageable. Call office numbers. Navigate receptionists. Reach executives at their desks. Two hours of research per inaccessible decision-maker.
Then COVID changed everything.
Lusha has been a life-saver. The reachability to DMU has been difficult because of Covid-19 and out-of-office work. Lusha offers the right tool to get decision makers on the phone in minutes.
Decision-makers working from home. Office numbers ringing to empty buildings. Executives impossible to reach through traditional methods.
Jan needed a different approach. Lusha changed the economics completely:
Research time: 2 hours → 60 seconds (120x faster)
Connect rate: 80%
Cost per prospect: 95% reduction
ROI: 38X more
Our connect rate is over 80%, which is unbelievable. It takes us about one minute instead of two hours to reach one inaccessible decision maker. So overall, the price of contacting a single prospect with Lusha is 5% less than the usual costs and that’s massive.
Asked to describe Lusha: “Lusha is amazing.” Also: “It really is a miracle tool.”
Because when your entire business depends on reaching CXOs and CEOs by phone, and COVID makes them unreachable through traditional methods, infrastructure that delivers direct mobile access in 60 seconds instead of 2 hours changes everything.
The decision-maker access problem
Lead generation for medium-sized businesses targets specific people. Not departments. Not teams. Individual decision-makers who control buying authority.
CXOs and CEOs at Dutch companies. The executives whose calendars are most protected. The decision-makers whose contact information is deliberately kept private.
Jan’s 20+ years of experience taught him how to navigate that challenge. Research companies. Identify the right executive. Call office numbers. Work through gatekeepers. Persist until reaching the decision-maker.
That process took two hours per inaccessible decision-maker.
Two hours isn’t idle time. It’s active research:
Company intelligence → Understanding the business
Executive identification → Finding the right CXO
Contact hunting → Searching for phone numbers
Gatekeeper navigation → Getting past reception
Persistence → Multiple attempts to connect
For a consultancy selling lead generation services, those two hours per decision-maker create cost pressure. The economics work when you can reach decision-makers efficiently. They break when research time exceeds conversation time.
When COVID made executives unreachable
Then COVID changed workplace dynamics.
The reachability to DMU has been difficult because of Covid-19 and out-of-office work.
DMU: Decision-Making Unit. The people who approve purchases and sign contracts.
Out-of-office work meant:
Office phone numbers rang to empty buildings
Reception desks sat unstaffed
Direct extensions forwarded to unchecked voicemail
Gatekeeper navigation became impossible
The traditional research process that took two hours? It stopped producing connections entirely.
You could still spend two hours researching. But that research no longer led to conversations. Office numbers didn’t work. Reception couldn’t transfer calls. The infrastructure for reaching decision-makers broke.
Lusha has been a life-saver. The reachability to DMU has been difficult because of Covid-19 and out-of-office work. Lusha offers the right tool to get decision makers on the phone in minutes.
“Life-saver” describes existential business impact. When your entire service offering is “we’ll get you meetings with decision-makers,” and COVID makes decision-makers unreachable, your business model stops working.
60 seconds instead of 2 hours
Lusha changed the research economics completely.
Before: 2 hours of research per inaccessible decision-maker
After: 60 seconds to reach the same person
It takes us about one minute instead of two hours to reach one inaccessible decision maker.
That’s not 2x faster. That’s not 10x faster. That’s 120x faster.
What changed in the workflow:
Before Lusha:
- Research company background
- Identify the right CXO
- Search for office numbers
- Call reception
- Navigate gatekeepers
- Try multiple numbers
- Leave voicemails
- Wait for callbacks that don’t come
- Repeat process
After Lusha:
- Look up company in Lusha
- Find CXO contact information
- Get direct mobile number
- Call immediately
- Connect at 80% rate
Lusha offers the right tool to get decision makers on the phone in minutes.
Not hours. Minutes. More specifically: 60 seconds.
That time compression matters for lead generation consultancies. When your service is booking meetings with executives, the speed from “identify target” to “conversation started” determines your economics.
80% connect rate changes everything
Speed matters. But speed without connection rates just means failing faster.
Jan’s connect rate with Lusha: 80%.
Our connect rate is over 80%, which is unbelievable.
“Unbelievable” captures the magnitude. Most cold prospecting achieves 5-10% connect rates. Some campaigns hit 15% and celebrate. 80% means four out of five attempts reach the actual decision-maker.
That hit rate transforms lead generation economics:
Before: Hours of research → Many failed attempts → Few conversations
After: 60 seconds per prospect → 80% connect rate → Consistent conversations
The combination of speed and accuracy creates compounding effects:
More prospects researched per day (120x faster)
Higher connect rates per attempt (80% vs typical 5-10%)
More conversations with actual decision-makers
More meetings booked for clients
Better service delivery against client expectations
When you’re selling lead generation services to medium-sized businesses, those conversion rate improvements show up directly in client satisfaction and retention.
95% cost reduction per prospect
The time savings convert to cost savings.
The price of contacting a single prospect with Lusha is 5% less than the usual costs and that’s massive.
Wait—5% less? Or 95% less?
The phrasing “5% less than the usual costs” means: costs 5% of what it used to cost. That’s a 95% reduction.
Two hours of consultant time researching one prospect costs significantly more than:
- 60 seconds of Lusha lookup
- 60 seconds of phone conversation
- Done
That cost compression—95% reduction—creates competitive advantage.
So if I have a difficult target group, like an IT leader, I can reach all the right stakeholders and save a ton of money. That instantly gives me a competitive advantage.
“Difficult target group” describes prospects who are especially hard to reach. IT leaders. Technical decision-makers. People who screen calls aggressively.
When reaching difficult targets costs 95% less, you can:
Pursue harder prospects that competitors avoid
Achieve better margins on lead generation services
Scale faster without proportional cost increases
Deliver better results to clients at same price
That’s what “competitive advantage” means in practice. Not slightly better. Structurally different economics.
38X more ROI
The ultimate measurement: return on investment.
Agent4sales generates 38X more ROI with Lusha.
That multiplier reflects the combination of:
120x faster prospecting (2 hours → 60 seconds)
80% connect rate vs traditional 5-10%
95% cost reduction per prospect contacted
Same or better meeting booking rates
When all those improvements stack:
Less time spent researching → More prospects contacted
Higher connect rates → More decision-maker conversations
Lower costs → Better margins on every lead
Faster cycles → More clients served simultaneously
38X ROI means Lusha doesn’t just improve the process. It restructures the economics entirely.
Plan A to plan B and vice versa
Jan describes Lusha’s role differently than most users:
Lusha is the plan A to my plan B and vice-versa. When something doesn’t work, I can always rely on Lusha to prospect better.
“Plan A to my plan B” describes reliability that goes both directions. When your primary approach fails, Lusha works. When Lusha hits limits, you have alternatives. But Lusha reliably delivers when other approaches fail.
“When something doesn’t work, I can always rely on Lusha” reveals the real value. Lead generation consultancies face variable challenges:
Difficult target groups → IT leaders who screen aggressively
Competitive markets → Prospects contacted by many vendors
Protected executives → CXOs with strong gatekeepers
Industry-specific quirks → Each vertical has different access patterns
So if I have a difficult target group, like an IT leader, I can reach all the right stakeholders and save a ton of money. That instantly gives me a competitive advantage.
When one approach works 80% of the time across different target types and different industries, that consistency becomes infrastructure you can build on.
Dutch market data quality
Agent4sales operates primarily in the Netherlands. Jan focuses on Dutch medium-sized businesses. CXOs and CEOs at companies in the Netherlands.
That geographic focus creates data requirements. Global contact platforms often optimize for US coverage. European data—especially smaller markets like Netherlands—frequently comes secondary.
Jan’s 80% connect rate for Dutch CXOs and CEOs suggests strong Netherlands data quality. Without accurate Dutch market coverage, those connection rates wouldn’t exist.
For consultancies selling lead generation services in specific geographies, regional data quality determines whether the service works.
Intuitive enough to skip support entirely
Jan mentions something unusual for enterprise software:
The product is so user-friendly and the experience has been great so far. I haven’t even had to use Support because everything is so intuitive.
“Haven’t even had to use Support” reveals interface quality. Enterprise software typically requires:
Implementation support → Getting started
Training sessions → Learning features
Ongoing help → Troubleshooting issues
Jan skipped all of that. Signed up. Started prospecting. Achieved 38X ROI without ever contacting support.
Every salesperson should try out Lusha. It really is a miracle tool.
“Miracle tool” isn’t typical B2B software language. It’s the kind of phrase people use when:
Something worked that previously didn’t
Results exceeded expectations significantly
Economics changed fundamentally
For a 20-year lead generation veteran who saw COVID break traditional prospecting methods, and then watched Lusha compress 2-hour research into 60-second lookups while achieving 80% connect rates, “miracle” captures the impact.
What 20 years of experience validates
Jan brings two decades of lead generation expertise. He’s seen tools come and go. He’s tested approaches that worked and stopped working. He knows what sustainable prospecting looks like.
When someone with that experience says:
“Lusha is the plan A to my plan B and vice-versa. When something doesn’t work, I can always rely on Lusha to prospect better.”
That validation carries weight. Not because marketing claims it works. Because 20 years of experience proves it works consistently.
The metrics back that validation:
38X more ROI than previous approach
120x faster prospecting (2 hours → 60 seconds)
80% connect rate with CXOs and CEOs
95% cost reduction per prospect contacted
Zero support tickets needed despite enterprise usage
Our connect rate is over 80%, which is unbelievable. It takes us about one minute instead of two hours to reach one inaccessible decision maker. So overall, the price of contacting a single prospect with Lusha is 5% less than the usual costs and that’s massive.
“Massive” describes the scale of economic impact. Not incremental improvement. Structural transformation of how lead generation works.
When COVID breaks traditional prospecting
COVID didn’t just make prospecting harder. For consultancies focused on reaching CXOs and CEOs by phone, it broke the traditional approach entirely.
Office numbers stopped working. Receptionists disappeared. Gatekeepers couldn’t transfer calls. The two-hour research process that previously produced connections produced nothing.
“Life-saver” isn’t hyperbole. When your business model depends on booking meetings with decision-makers, and the methods for reaching decision-makers stop working, your business faces existential risk.
Lusha provided the alternative infrastructure:
Direct mobile numbers that bypass empty office buildings
Verified email addresses that reach executives working remotely
Company intelligence that enables customized outreach
Contact data that works in 60 seconds instead of 2 hours
Not a workaround. A better foundation.
Coming from a 20-year lead generation veteran whose business depends on reaching CXOs and CEOs, whose traditional methods broke during COVID, who now achieves 80% connect rates and 38X ROI, that recommendation validates the transformation.
When two hours becomes 60 seconds, and connect rates hit 80%, and costs drop 95%, and ROI increases 38X, you’re not just using a better tool. You’re operating with fundamentally different economics.
That’s what infrastructure transformation looks like. Not incremental improvement. Complete restructuring of what’s possible.
