Gatekeepers blocked everything. Every customized campaign went nowhere.
Shahin Hoda founded xGrowth, an account-based marketing agency in Melbourne, Australia. With 11-50 employees, xGrowth helps B2B tech companies build revenue-focused growth engines through customized ABM campaigns, content strategy, and thought leadership positioning.
Each campaign xGrowth creates is tailored specifically to the target organization. Research. Custom messaging. Personalized pitch decks. Hours of work per prospect.
That level of customization converts—when you can reach the decision-maker to deliver it.
Before Lusha, Shahin and his team couldn’t reach anyone.
Before Lusha we were not able to reach decision makers and we were getting no numbers.
Not low connect rates. Not struggling to reach people. Zero. No numbers found. No decision-makers reached.
Every customized campaign Shahin’s team built went nowhere because gatekeepers blocked all access. Switchboard operators transferred calls to the wrong people. Receptionists collected messages that never got returned.
Previously we’d have to go through gatekeepers in order to reach decision-makers, which was a very unsuccessful process.
Very unsuccessful is putting it mildly. Zero connect rate means your entire sales motion breaks.
Then Shahin started using Lusha Extension to pull direct mobile numbers from LinkedIn.
Connect rate: 0% → 40-50%.
With Lusha we now reach 40-50% of the decision makers we want to reach.
Not incremental improvement. From completely blocked to nearly half of all targets reached.
Asked to describe Lusha in one word, Shahin chose: “Superpower.”
Because that’s what it is when you go from reaching zero decision-makers to reaching half of them.
The gatekeeper minefield
Account-based marketing requires reaching specific decision-makers at target accounts. Not just any contact. The exact person who controls budget and makes buying decisions.
For an agency creating customized campaigns, that targeting is essential. You research a company. You understand their challenges. You build a pitch specifically for them. You need to deliver that pitch to the CMO or VP of Marketing who can actually act on it.
Generic outreach doesn’t work for ABM. Spray-and-pray doesn’t work. You’re targeting 10-20 accounts per quarter with highly personalized campaigns.
You need to reach those specific people.
Before Lusha, Shahin faced a wall.
Before Lusha, it was a minefield to reach decision-makers. Now it’s easy to grab their attention.
A minefield isn’t just difficult navigation. It’s infrastructure designed to block you.
Call the company line. Get transferred to reception. Explain why you’re calling. Get transferred to the wrong department. Leave a voicemail. Never get a callback.
Try again. Different receptionist. Same result. No access to the decision-maker you actually need to reach.
That’s not sales friction. That’s sales blockage.
When customization hits a wall
xGrowth’s ABM approach invests significant time per target account.
Each campaign we create is customized to the organization we’re going after.
Deep company research. Competitive analysis. Custom messaging. Personalized content. Pitch decks built specifically for that prospect.
That investment pays off—when you can deliver it to the right person.
When you can’t reach anyone? All that customization work becomes waste.
Imagine spending 10 hours creating a perfectly tailored campaign for a high-value prospect, then spending days trying unsuccessfully to reach them through gatekeepers who block every attempt.
That was xGrowth’s reality before Lusha.
Zero decision-makers reached. Hours of campaign work going nowhere. No way to pitch the customized strategies they’d built.
Not because the campaigns were bad. Because gatekeepers prevented access to the people who could evaluate them.
From zero to 40-50%
Once Shahin started using Lusha Extension, the blockage disappeared.
Find target decision-maker on LinkedIn. Pull their verified mobile number. Call them directly.
No receptionist. No gatekeeper. No switchboard transfers. Direct access to the CMO or VP of Marketing you need to reach.
Before Lusha we were not able to reach decision makers and we were getting no numbers. With Lusha, we now reach 40-50% of the decision makers we want to reach.
That’s not just better numbers. That’s viable business versus complete failure.
At 0%, ABM doesn’t work. You can’t run an agency selling customized campaigns when you can’t reach anyone to pitch them.
At 40-50%, you have a functioning sales motion. Half your targets get reached. Half your customized campaigns get delivered. Half actually gets heard by decision-makers.
Connect rates that determine everything
Shahin measures success through connect rates: how often his team actually speaks with decision-makers.
One of the main impacts Lusha has had on xGrowth, is the drastic increase in connect rates.
Connect rates matter more than most metrics because they determine whether anything else happens.
No connection = no pitch delivered = no deal = no revenue.
High connect rates mean:
More business conversations
More opportunities to present customized campaigns
More qualified prospects in pipeline
More closed deals
Higher connect rates means Shahin and his reps have more business conversations and close more sales.
For an ABM agency, connect rate is the foundational metric. Everything else builds on top of whether you can reach the right people.
xGrowth went from 0% to 40-50%. That’s not improvement. That’s making the business model viable.
Why Lusha won the head-to-head
Shahin tested multiple prospecting tools before choosing Lusha.
The decision came down to three factors:
Simplicity
LinkedIn integration
Pricing flexibility
We chose Lusha because of how comfortably and easily we could extract the data.
Comfort and ease matter when your team uses a tool dozens of times per day. Friction in the data extraction process compounds across every prospect search.
Lusha’s LinkedIn integration meant one seamless workflow: find prospect → pull number → call. No switching between platforms. No manual data entry.
The simplicity, and how well it integrates with LinkedIn.
The pricing model sealed the decision.
The monthly plans Lusha offered were a lot more suitable price-wise than the competition.
For an 11-50 person agency, pricing flexibility matters. You need tools that scale with usage without enterprise-level commitment.
Lusha delivered better integration, simpler workflow, and more flexible pricing than alternatives. Head-to-head, it wasn’t close.
Making life easier
Ask Shahin what Lusha does for xGrowth, and the answer focuses on one thing: access.
Everyone wants the ability to reach decision-makers via their direct phone number, Lusha makes it happen.
Everyone wants it. Most don’t have it. Lusha provides it.
For xGrowth, that access transformed the business:
0% → 40-50% connect rate with decision-makers
Zero numbers found → Direct mobile access to targets
Gatekeeper blocked → Direct dial enabled
Customized campaigns wasted → Campaigns delivered to right people
“Minefield” → “Easy to grab their attention”
Lusha makes my life, and our sales team’s lives much easier.
Easier isn’t just convenience. It’s the difference between business model that works and one that doesn’t.
When you create customized ABM campaigns that require hours of work per prospect, reaching 0% of your targets means complete business failure.
Reaching 40-50% means you have a functioning sales motion.
That’s not making life easier. That’s making the business viable.
Asked to describe Lusha in one word, Shahin chose: “Superpower.”
Because going from zero access to reaching half your targets isn’t incremental improvement. It’s infrastructure that makes your business model possible.
