After 8.5 years of referrals, one month it’s great, the next month nothing
Jon Quinton built Overdrive Digital the way most agencies do: deliver great work, earn recommendations, repeat. For 8.5 years, that approach worked. Mostly. Except when it didn’t.
“Some months it’s amazing, some months nothing,” Jon explains. That inconsistency is the agency curse—you’re either too busy to prospect or too slow to be strategic about it.
In January 2024, Jon decided enough was enough. Overdrive repositioned to focus 100% on B2B, hired their first SDR, and launched a new growth engine: in-person events.
Not virtual webinars. Real breakfast meetings in London where marketing leaders gather, network, and actually have conversations.
The goal? Fill every seat with qualified prospects. People who could become clients.
There was just one problem: you can’t run sold-out events without a way to find the guests.
Building the machine
Around the same time that we rebranded, repositioned, got our SDR, we knew we had to get a technology stack in place to help fuel the engine.
Jon needed list-building capabilities, quality contact data for London-area prospects, and email accuracy. They weren’t doing cold calls—just email and LinkedIn outreach. And critically: it needed to be cost-effective.
They evaluated Lusha and Cognism.
Our requirements are probably quite straightforward—it’s list building, and we just needed access to good quality data that we could use really easily. And you guys did everything we needed at a really good cost compared to the competition.
Lusha won on simplicity and price.
The workflow
Here’s how Overdrive fills events:
Target profile:
- Geography: London and commutable distance
- Companies: Tech or professional services, £10M+ revenue
- Job titles: CMOs, Heads of Marketing, Heads of Digital, Performance Marketing Managers
Process:
- Build targeted lists using Lusha’s search functionality
- Multi-channel outreach: email campaigns, LinkedIn messaging, connection requests
- Amplify with LinkedIn ads
- Fill the room
No complex automation. No elaborate sequences. Just clean, targeted lists feeding a straightforward outreach strategy.
What we’re doing is email, LinkedIn messaging, LinkedIn connections, and that’s all been fine.
Phone data? About 80% accurate when they tested it. But email data—the channel they actually use—works reliably.
The results
Since launching this strategy in early 2024, Overdrive Digital has run 12 in-person events in London.
Not 12 events with scattered attendance. Not 12 events where half the room is vendors or existing customers.
12 events. All full. All new prospects.
Event formats:
- Larger sessions: 40 guests
- Intimate roundtables: 10-15 guests
Current cadence: One event every two weeks.
We’re running regular events in London. We’re doing them as frequently as we can, and we have to get this many people in. We just have to have Lusha in the mix to do that. That would be impossible without having Lusha.
Beyond list building
For Jon, Lusha isn’t just a prospecting tool—it’s market intelligence.
A lot of what we talk about in B2B marketing: it’s one thing having your ICP on a set of bullet points, but being able to use a tool like Lusha to go in and actually see who’s who and who’s working for who and what job titles they’re in and what they’re doing is massively valuable.
Jon even includes Lusha in presentations he gives at B2B marketing events. The message? If you’re serious about go-to-market strategy, you need customer data. Not hunches. Not assumptions. Actual visibility into who your prospects are and how to reach them.
The proof? One of Overdrive’s clients started using Lusha after seeing Jon’s presentation. Their problem: sales reps weren’t capturing contact details from inbound leads. Jon’s solution: “Use Lusha. Someone named Bob from a company gets in touch but doesn’t leave his phone number? Lusha’s got his phone number.”
What changed
After 8.5 years of riding the referral rollercoaster, Overdrive Digital has something rare in agency-land: predictable growth.
Not through expensive ad campaigns. Not through hiring a massive sales team. Through a simple, repeatable system:
- Identify the right prospects with Lusha
- Invite them to valuable events
- Build relationships in person
- Convert attendees into clients
The events strategy works because the targeting is precise. And the targeting is precise because the data is reliable.
If you’re serious about doing something from a go-to-market, outbound, or general B2B marketing perspective, you have to have customer data.
Jon isn’t hoping for referrals anymore. He’s building a pipeline. One sold-out event at a time.
