How Side Turned a Phone-First Sales Team Into a Full Outbound Engine with Lemcoach
April 15, 2026
|9 min read
Side lost a €19M client and needed to shift from margin-preservation to market-share conquest. With lemcoach, they transformed a phone-only sales team into a full multichannel outbound machine — booking meetings within days.
30%
reply rate on expansion campaigns
5
coaching sessions
10
reps onboarded to multichannel
Side had something most B2B companies only dream of: a genuinely hungry sales team. The problem wasn't motivation. It was that their multichannel outbound system barely existed, and a €19M client just told them goodbye. With lemlist in place but barely touched, and pressure to shift from margin-preservation to market-share conquest, they needed more than a tool. They needed a playbook.
The Situation: Revenue at Risk, a Tool on the Shelf
Side is a temporary staffing platform (intérim) that operates across several verticals in France: retail, logistics, seasonal work, and growing hospitality. After being acquired by the Randstad group, the company maintained its DNA of strong margins and high-quality placements. Until 2025 forced a rethink.
Their biggest client, BasicFit, represented 25% of annual revenue, roughly €19M in volume. Then BasicFit announced a strategic pivot away from temporary staffing. In parallel, the broader staffing market was contracting, and competitive pricing pressure was mounting. For 2026, Side made a deliberate decision: stop protecting margins and start aggressively capturing market share, especially with accounts worth €1M+ annually.
"We used to win because of our margins and quality. Now, the market is so price-sensitive that we need to move faster and go after bigger accounts more systematically." — Florent Noirfalise, Head of Sales
Their symptoms going into lemcoach were classic for a strong sales culture that hadn't yet made the leap to structured outbound:
- A team of 10-15 salespeople with heavy phone/cold-call habits and little email or LinkedIn sequencing practice
- lemlist onboarded but mostly used for basic email sends — no multichannel sequences, no segmentation logic
- Two reps who had never opened lemlist at all
- Campaign copywriting that was too generic, too corporate, and too focused on getting a meeting in message one
- No shared knowledge base, no rituals around campaign review
"Convinced by the solution, that's for sure. But I know there's a lot still to iterate on in my campaigns. I'm very open to this coaching, especially because I think the team already knows it's a good tool." — Clément Gielly, lemlist Champion at Side
This is where lemcoach came in.
The Journey: Five Sessions, Three Transformations
Transformation 1: Stop Prospecting Industries. Start Prospecting Business Models.
The first session opened with a business model deep-dive that quickly surfaced one of the most valuable strategic insights of the entire coaching. Erwan Gauthier, one of the coaches, asked a seemingly simple question about look-alike prospecting and then reframed the answer entirely.
The team was naturally thinking about replicating BasicFit success by reaching out to similar gym chains like Keep Cool or Neon. Erwan pushed back:
"If I'm the HR director of a home goods retailer like Emma, and you talk to me about how BasicFit operated their temp staffing, that interests me more than a direct competitor of mine who has a completely different model. I think the pattern isn't in the industry, it's in the operational format of how people work in the store." — Erwan Gauthier, Coach
The insight unlocked a completely different targeting approach. Instead of "here are other gyms like BasicFit," Side could build campaigns around "here's how a standardized, low-staffing-ratio business like yours deals with workforce gaps, and here's what the best of them do differently." The reference could come from a completely different sector and actually land harder because it's new information the prospect hadn't already processed.
The lesson: Your best look-alike isn't in your industry. It's in the business model.
Transformation 2: From Corporate Emails to Conversations That Feel Human
Session two was a live copywriting review of campaigns submitted by the team. Victor Delcambre, the lead coach, reviewed several drafts. The feedback was direct but constructive. One campaign for a major retail account had several structural problems typical of teams just starting out with outbound:
- Three questions packed into one message, with no expectation that a prospect would answer all of them
- A meeting request in the very first touch
- Generic social proof that could apply to any company in any vertical
- An email subject line that looked and felt like prospecting from line one
"If you're Kiabi and you receive this, aside from the retail references in the middle, there's nothing here that tells you this wasn't sent to a hundred other companies. And that's a problem." — Victor Delcambre, Lead Coach
Several tactical shifts became immediately actionable:
Subject lines as signals, not summaries. For reactivation campaigns targeting existing or former clients, use a subject format like "TR: Dossier Side [Company Name]." It signals continuity rather than intrusion.
CTAs that reduce friction, not add it. Instead of "would you like to block 30 minutes for a call?", try "tell me when's a good time to call you." Prospects answer with "Tuesday at 3pm" and you send the invite.
Cross-channel referencing. In your LinkedIn message, mention that you also sent an email. In your email, mention LinkedIn. It makes the whole thing feel like a person trying to get through, not a machine.
Industry jargon as trust signals. Don't say "competitive pricing policy." Say "our coefficient on this contract type was 1.01." Prospects know exactly where to place you.
Voice messages as a 2nd or 3rd touch, not first. Lemlist data shows 29% reply rate when LinkedIn voice messages are part of a sequence. But the key is: make them sound human. Imperfect. Record it like you'd leave a voicemail for a friend.
Transformation 3: Building the Machine Around the Team, Not Just the Campaigns
By session three, something had already changed. Florent had launched a campaign targeting Leclerc regional directors using the new principles, and had booked his first meeting before the coaching call even started.
"I built it from scratch, starting fresh instead of duplicating an old campaign. I tried to apply everything we'd talked about. And there it is: first meeting booked, Wednesday morning." — Florent Noirfalise
The coaching sessions shifted into systems mode. Several structures were designed and implemented:
A Friday ritual. Every Friday morning, the team does a round-table of campaigns that ran well that week, with stats and insights shared openly.
A Slack channel for wins. Automated Slack alerts whenever a reply comes in, tagged by vertical. If your team sees a positive reply pop up in real time, they want one too.
A campaign knowledge base. The coaches pushed the team to document what they test and what results it generates. 15 people running campaigns means you need to stop reinventing the wheel.
Salesforce source tracking. The team added a lemlist attribution tag to Salesforce opportunities to measure direct revenue impact of outbound sequences.
Aircall integration. Connected during session three, this allowed the dashboard to show call performance alongside email and LinkedIn stats — finally giving managers a unified view.
Book your coachingThe Results
By the end of the coaching arc, Side's outbound posture had changed measurably.
- First meetings booked within days of applying the new frameworks, starting with Florent's Leclerc campaign
- Multiple reps generating positive replies by session four, including reps who had never opened lemlist before the coaching
- A skeptical cold-call-only rep converted: one rep who had dismissed lemlist as not relevant for their vertical ran two campaigns, got responses, and is now integrating it into their regular workflow
- 30% reply rate on expansion campaigns (Leclerc regional director targeting), with response quality high enough to qualify as genuine pipeline conversations
- Internal training session run by the team, for the team, covering the 10 rules shared by the coaches, with live campaign critiques
- Weekly ritual institutionalized with a Friday review slot and Slack infrastructure to support ongoing iteration
"There's real buy-in now. At the beginning, the tool was a little intimidating for some people. Now they're actually waiting for results, which means they're invested. We just need to keep telling them there's no magic formula. It's iteration." — Clément Gielly
Why This Works for Companies with Strong Sales Cultures
Side's case is especially relevant because the coaching challenge wasn't enthusiasm. It was channel habit.
Teams that are excellent at phone-first outbound often resist email and LinkedIn not because they're lazy, but because they genuinely don't see the ROI of adding complexity. The coaching addressed this directly: lemlist wasn't pitched as a replacement for calling. It was positioned as a warm-up layer that makes every call land better.
"If I can show you by the numbers that your close rate improves when there was a prior email touchpoint, then even the person who lives for the call has a reason to care." — Victor Delcambre
Three lessons apply to any team in a similar position:
1. Your best look-alike isn't in your industry. It's in the business model. Who else has the same operational format, the same staffing challenges? That comparison will be more interesting to your prospect than any same-sector reference.
2. Warm campaigns are your learning environment. Start with the accounts you know. They'll respond faster, and those responses teach you which angle works before you take it cold.
3. The Friday ritual is non-negotiable. Teams that share what's working stop reinventing the wheel every campaign cycle. One meeting booked by one rep, surfaced and discussed, can unlock ten more.
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Side is currently scaling their multichannel outbound system across 15 reps and multiple verticals, with Salesforce attribution tracking and weekly rituals now fully institutionalized.
Ready to Build Your Outbound System?
If Side's story sounds familiar — a strong sales team with the right motivation but the wrong tools and processes: lemcoach might be your move.
What you get:
- ✔ A strategic audit of your current campaigns and targeting logic
- ✔ Live copywriting reviews from coaches who work across dozens of industries
- ✔ Multichannel sequence structure built for your personas and sales culture
- ✔ Integration support (CRM, Slack, Aircall, and more)
- ✔ The rituals and reporting infrastructure to make it stick
- ✔ 10,000 free lemlist credits to test everything
Investment: $500 for 3 months
Return: From zero structured outbound to a team-wide system with first meetings booked inside the first month.
Side is a temporary staffing platform (intérim) that operates across several verticals in France: retail, logistics, seasonal work, and growing hospitality. Acquired by the Randstad group, Side maintained its DNA of strong margins and high-quality placements.
SIZE
200+ employees
FOUNDED
2016
