Following a difficult Q4 2025 — in which the sales pipeline stalled after the departure of the previous sales hire in August — Asymmetric brought on Jacob Jones to rebuild outbound sales from scratch. By the end of Q4, Jacob had established a repeatable workflow and tracking infrastructure. The focus for Q1 2026 is converting that process into actual replies and closed deals.
The broader context: sales, gross profit margin, and client retention were all down in Q4. Mark Hope has been personally re-engaging lapsed clients (PaperTube, Global Coin) and converting project clients to retainers (New Dawn, Seamless) to bridge the gap while the outbound pipeline matures.
Jacob developed a workflow that takes approximately 10–15 minutes per company to:
1. Find and qualify a target company
2. Research the company for personalization
3. Enroll them in an outbound sequence via HubSpot
This efficiency target was a deliberate Q4 OKR — the goal was to build a process that could scale without becoming a bottleneck.
Jacob built a HubSpot-based tracking dashboard to monitor:
- Outbound activity volume
- Email opens (described as "a decent number" by end of Q4)
- Replies (none received as of the Q4 review)
The dashboard is functional but noted as needing additional refinement.
While Jacob builds the outbound engine, Mark is personally driving near-term revenue:
- PaperTube — re-engaged as a returning client
- Global Coin — previous client being revitalized
- New Dawn & Seamless — project clients being converted to retainers (led by Sebastian)
- Active pitch to a new CEO-level prospect (outcome pending as of meeting date)
"At some point, you're going to have to put your head down and start pounding your face." — Mark Hope
Mark's framing: there's a risk of over-optimizing the process and never executing at scale. The Q1 mandate is to shift from process refinement to raw outreach volume.