The constraint
Palico has been the digital marketplace for LP-led secondaries since 2011: the place where smaller and mid-sized investors buy and sell fund positions. The platform connects over 2,000 accredited investors, and in 2024 alone listed more than $1 billion in secondary sales across 200+ fund positions.
The sales team behind it: fewer than 20 people, in a market where every inbox is already full of outbound.
"Everyone is doing outbound these days, right? The main problem that we kept running into is how to stand out in someone's inbox."
Paloma Hernandez, Head of Sales, Palico
Standing out meant personalization, and personalization done by hand meant hours of research per prospect, emails crafted one at a time, all sent from the company's main domain, with deliverability and brand reputation riding on every send.
What we built
A rebuild in five layers.
Protected sending first: dedicated outreach domains with proper authentication, so the main domain and its reputation stay out of the line of fire.
Then the data: contact details gathered at scale and enriched through Crunchbase with the facts that matter in this market (fund type, size, region).
Then personalization without the hours: Clay powered dynamic fields like industry focus, recent activity, and location, so each email reads individually written without anyone doing the research by hand.
Then the sending: multi-step Smartlead sequences with timed follow-ups, subject line variations, and A/B tested copy, tracked in real time.
And a weekly reporting loop on top, flagging which messages earned responses and which angles to try next.
Results
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Positive replies | 6 to 15 every week, from week two |
| Clients closed from early replies | 3, within the first weeks |
| New conversations | Daily |
| New hires required | None |
"It's almost like expanding the sales team and having an extra resource in-house. Very time efficient for us."
Paloma Hernandez, Head of Sales, Palico
What this means for you
A lean team in a regulated, relationship-driven market does not need more hands to run real outbound. It needs the research, personalization, and follow-up turned into a system that runs around the clock, so the people you do have spend their time on conversations, not prospecting.
