When switchboards block access and LinkedIn disappears
Dominic Pina is an Account Executive at GetMoss, a Berlin-based fintech serving mid-market German companies. Founded in 2019, GetMoss now has 201-500 employees helping businesses centralize and digitize their spend management.
As an AE, Dominic handles both sides of the pipeline:
Close existing opportunities → Run demos and manage deals
Create new pipeline → Cold outreach and prospecting
That second responsibility—cold outreach—ran into the same walls most AEs hit when they need to prospect:
Switchboard gatekeepers who redirect to info@ email addresses
LinkedIn InMails that disappear without replies
Manual enrichment that consumes time better spent selling
Manual lead enrichment meant every prospect required research. Find the company. Identify the right stakeholder. Hunt for contact information. Call the switchboard. Get blocked by reception. Email info@. Wait. Repeat.
It doesn’t make sense to call a switchboard, just to be told to email info@. For me, this is a total waste of time.
That cycle doesn’t create pipeline. It creates busy work that looks like prospecting but produces nothing.
When a colleague mentioned Lusha, Dominic tested it against two other B2B contact data platforms. Lusha won on three factors: affordability, ease of use, and results.
Data accuracy: up to 80%.
A colleague told me about Lusha, and after that, I never looked back.
Asked to describe Lusha in one word: “Success.”
Because when switchboards become dead ends and LinkedIn messaging disappears into the void, direct contact information changes what’s possible.
The gatekeeper problem
Account executives closing deals shouldn’t need to prospect. But many do.
Dominic’s role includes both: demo and close existing opportunities, generate new pipeline through cold outreach.
The outreach part created friction. He received lists of leads whose contact information needed enrichment. Standard process:
Research company → Find decision-maker → Call switchboard → Get blocked
Switchboard calls followed predictable patterns:
“Let me transfer you to their voicemail.”
“Can you send an email to info@?”
“They’re not available right now.”
None of those responses create conversations. They’re polite ways to say “go away.”
It doesn’t make sense to call a switchboard, just to be told to email info@. For me, this is a total waste of time.
LinkedIn InMails offered an alternative path. Direct messaging to decision-makers without switchboard gatekeepers.
Except InMails disappear. Busy executives ignore LinkedIn message requests from strangers. The read rate is abysmal. The reply rate worse.
So Dominic was stuck:
Phone path: Switchboards block access
Email path: Generic addresses don’t reach decision-makers
LinkedIn path: Messages vanish into the void
None of those paths create pipeline efficiently. They’re activities that look like prospecting but don’t produce conversations.
The colleague recommendation
Like many sales tool discoveries, Dominic’s Lusha adoption started with a conversation.
Colleague recommendations carry weight. When someone you work with says “this tool actually works,” you listen.
But Dominic didn’t adopt immediately. He tested.
Three different B2B contact data platforms. Side-by-side evaluation. Same use case: enrich leads, bypass gatekeepers, connect with decision-makers.
Lusha won the comparison on three criteria:
Affordability: Pricing that worked for individual AE budgets
Ease of use: Fast enrichment without complex workflows
Results: Data accuracy that justified the investment
That third factor—results—matters most. Cheap tools that don’t work waste money. Complex tools that slow you down waste time. Accurate tools that deliver contact information quickly create conversations.
Data accuracy with Lusha: up to 80%.
I needed a B2B contact tool with high accuracy rates and for me, Lusha is that tool.
80% means four out of five contacts work. That ratio changes prospecting economics completely.
When manual research finds one working contact after ten attempts, your time investment per conversation is massive.
When enrichment delivers working contacts at 80% accuracy, your time shifts from hunting information to having conversations.
Quick enrichment replaces manual research
Before Lusha: receive lead lists, manually enrich each contact, research companies, hunt for phone numbers, call switchboards, get blocked, try LinkedIn, get ignored.
After Lusha: enrich leads quickly, connect with key stakeholders, push qualified prospects through the funnel.
Now, Dominic is able to quickly find prospects who meet the qualification criteria and connect with key stakeholders, pushing leads down the funnel and onto the next stage of the sales cycle.
That workflow change matters. When enrichment happens in seconds instead of minutes:
More prospects contacted per day
Less time researching contact information
Faster pipeline creation from cold outreach
Better close rates from direct stakeholder access
The close rate improvement comes from conversation quality. Switchboard transfers go to voicemail. Generic email addresses never reach decision-makers. LinkedIn messages disappear.
Direct phone numbers and verified emails reach actual people. Different conversation quality. Different conversion rates. Different results.
When affordability enables adoption
Dominic tested three platforms. Lusha won partially on affordability.
That pricing factor matters for AEs doing cold outreach. If the tool costs more than the value it creates in pipeline, the economics don’t work.
But affordability alone doesn’t win. Cheap tools that don’t deliver accurate contacts waste money at any price.
Lusha won on the combination: affordable pricing AND 80% accuracy AND ease of use.
That triple advantage creates clear ROI:
Fast enrichment saves time → More outreach per day
High accuracy delivers working contacts → More conversations per attempt
Affordable pricing keeps costs reasonable → Positive ROI on pipeline created
When all three factors align, adoption becomes obvious.
“Never looked back” means no competitor testing after adoption. No searching for alternatives. No wondering if other tools work better.
The solution works. Keep using it.
The DACH market advantage
GetMoss serves German mid-market companies. That market focus creates data challenges.
Many global contact data platforms optimize for US coverage. European data—especially DACH region—often comes secondary. Lower accuracy. Fewer contacts. Incomplete coverage.
When your entire market sits in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, data quality in DACH determines whether your prospecting works.
Dominic’s 80% accuracy with Lusha suggests strong DACH coverage. That regional data strength matters when your prospects all operate in German-speaking markets.
Global platforms might deliver 80% accuracy in the US and 40% accuracy in Germany. For GetMoss, that 40% makes the tool useless.
Lusha’s DACH data quality enables prospecting that actually works for German mid-market targets.
From busy work to conversations
The switchboard problem isn’t about phone numbers. It’s about time.
When every prospect requires:
- Manual research to find company
- LinkedIn hunting to identify stakeholder
- Phone calls to switchboards that block access
- Generic emails to info@ addresses that go nowhere
- InMail attempts that disappear
You’re spending hours on activities that don’t create conversations.
That’s the productivity trap. You’re busy. You’re working hard. You’re executing prospecting activities. But you’re not having conversations with decision-makers.
Lusha changes the equation:
Enrich lead → Get direct contact → Start conversation
Now, Dominic is able to quickly find prospects who meet the qualification criteria and connect with key stakeholders, pushing leads down the funnel and onto the next stage of the sales cycle.
That workflow shift converts busy work into actual prospecting. Less time hunting information. More time having conversations.
When “success” means working contacts
Asked to describe Lusha in one word, Dominic chose: “Success.”
For an AE handling both closing and cold outreach, success means:
Demos converted → Existing opportunities closed
Pipeline created → New prospects qualified and advanced
Time optimized → Hours focused on selling, not researching
“High accuracy rates” translates directly to working contacts. When 80% of enriched leads provide actual phone numbers and verified emails, you spend time talking to prospects instead of hunting for ways to reach them.
That’s what success looks like in cold outreach:
Manual enrichment that consumed hours → Fast enrichment in seconds
Switchboard gatekeepers blocking access → Direct lines to decision-makers
LinkedIn InMails disappearing → Verified emails that reach inboxes
Dead ends and busy work → Actual conversations that create pipeline
Colleague recommendations validate product value. When sales professionals tell peers “this tool works,” that recommendation carries weight from shared experience.
Dominic tested alternatives. Compared three platforms. Chose Lusha for affordability, ease of use, and 80% data accuracy. Never looked for alternatives after adoption.
That’s the success pattern: discover through colleague recommendation, validate through testing, adopt based on results, keep using because it works.
When switchboards become dead ends and LinkedIn messaging disappears into the void, direct contact information isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s infrastructure that determines whether cold outreach creates pipeline.
Dominic needed to increase contact and close rates while handling both demo/close responsibilities and cold outreach. Switchboards blocked access. LinkedIn didn’t work. Manual enrichment consumed time.
Colleague recommended Lusha. Dominic tested three competitors. Lusha won on affordability, ease of use, and 80% accuracy. Now quickly enriches leads and connects with key stakeholders who actually respond.
Because “success” doesn’t mean having more data. It means having conversations with decision-makers who can buy.
