Cold Email Onboarding Questions: What We Ask Every Client
This page lists the 35 questions every Danish Lead Co client answers before we build a cold email campaign, grouped by topic, each with one line on why it matters. Frederik Jakobsen, founder of Danish Lead Co, uses the answers as the campaign context that every email starts from, whether a human or AI writes it.
AI writes the same email for you as for everyone else unless it knows things only you know. These are the questions every Danish Lead Co client answers before we build a campaign, with why each one matters.
How do you use these questions yourself?
- Block 30 to 60 minutes. Record a voice note and answer every question out loud, with examples.
- Transcribe it and keep it as one document. That's your campaign context.
- Give that document to whatever writes your emails, human or AI, before anything else.
What do we ask about what you sell?
If we can't explain what you do clearly, we can't sell it.
- 1
In 1 to 3 sentences, what do you sell? Explain it like you would to a smart 12-year-old.
Why: every email has to say this in one line. If it takes a paragraph here, it will take a paragraph in the email, and nobody reads that.
- 2
How do you make money, and what is an average client worth over its lifetime?
Why: client value decides how much effort each conversation deserves and how targeted the list needs to be. Below about $5,000 a year per client, outbound rarely pays back.
- 3
How do you get clients today? Ads, SEO, referrals, partners, cold email, events?
Why: what already works tells us which proof and language land. Referral-driven businesses usually have the best stories to borrow.
- 4
How long is your typical sales cycle, from first touch to closed deal?
Why: it sets how we judge the campaign. On a nine-month cycle, early conversations matter, not closed deals in month two.
What do we ask about who you sell to?
Targeting decides more than copy does. The more specific, the better the results.
- 5
Who are your best customers, and what do they have in common? Stage, values, budget.
Why: we build the list from your best customers, not from a broad category. "SaaS companies" is a market. "Series A SaaS selling to hospitals" is a list.
- 6
Which industries are they in, and which keywords describe them?
Why: the keywords are how we find them in databases and on the web. The obvious keyword is the one everyone else already targets.
- 7
How many employees do your ideal clients typically have?
Why: size changes who decides, what they care about, and which email providers and security gateways sit in front of their inbox.
- 8
What is the number one thing they struggle with that you solve?
Why: this becomes the reason to reply. One sharp problem beats a list of five benefits.
- 9
Which job titles are involved in buying, and how does the message land differently for each?
Why: a founder, a head of sales and a CFO need different first lines. We split them into separate segments.
- 10
What triggers them to start looking for something like you? Funding, churn, a new hire, regulation?
Why: triggers tell us when to email, not just who. Recently hired or promoted roughly halves the emails needed per conversation in our campaigns.
- 11
Before you, what were they using or doing instead?
Why: the alternative is your real competitor in the email, and naming it makes the message feel informed.
- 12
Which companies in these industries do you NOT want to work with?
Why: excluding them up front protects your reputation and keeps the list clean. It also usually sharpens the ideal profile.
- 13
Share 5 to 10 companies you would love to work with.
Why: real examples beat descriptions. We use them to find lookalike companies and to sanity check the list.
- 14
Where should they be located? Countries, states, regions.
Why: market size, sending time zones, language and legal rules all depend on it.
- 15
If you had 10 minutes to research a prospect before a manual email, what would you look up?
Why: this is the research we automate at scale. It's the difference between personalisation that required looking and a sentence written from the company name.
What do we ask about why buyers choose you?
What makes you different and credible, beyond the claims everyone makes.
- 16
Why do customers choose you over competitors? What do they actually say?
Why: the client's words are more convincing than ours, and they're rarely what the website says.
- 17
Which objections do you hear most, and how do you answer them?
Why: we answer the biggest objection inside the sequence before anyone has to raise it.
- 18
What is your strongest case study or outcome? Specific numbers, please.
Why: one real result with a number does more than any adjective. It often becomes the second email.
- 19
What do your best customers appreciate after working with you that nobody expects upfront?
Why: the surprising benefit is usually the most original angle, because competitors don't know to mention it.
- 20
Exactly what do clients get from you? Be as specific as possible.
Why: concrete deliverables make a low-friction offer possible ("want to see what the first week looks like?").
- 21
Do you offer any guarantees? What are the details?
Why: a real guarantee lowers the risk of replying. A vague one is better left out.
What do we ask to capture the voice of the customer?
The words your buyers use, so the email sounds like it came from someone who knows them.
- 22
Paste 2 to 3 real testimonials that capture what clients value most. Direct quotes, not marketing copy.
Why: testimonials show the outcome buyers actually care about, in their language.
- 23
Share at least 5 recent sales call recordings or transcripts, ideally with cold or low-intent buyers.
Why: this is where the real phrases, doubts and buying reasons are. No recordings yet? Record your next five calls.
- 24
When customers describe their challenge, which exact words, phrases or frustrations do they say out loud?
Why: we use their words, not yours. "Our pipeline is a rollercoaster" lands better than "inconsistent lead flow".
- 25
Paste sales emails you've used before to explain your service.
Why: they show what you already believe works, and what we should avoid repeating.
- 26
Have you used cold email before? Which angles did well, and which failed?
Why: a failed angle is just as useful. It saves weeks of testing something already proven not to work.
What do we ask about brand and positioning?
- 27
How should your brand feel in the market? Pick 2 or 3: calm authority, challenger, premium, approachable, technical, modern, trustworthy.
Why: tone decides word choice, length and how direct the ask is.
- 28
What do you NOT want to sound like?
Why: the fastest way to get the tone right is knowing what's off-limits.
- 29
How should we answer if someone asks about price in a reply?
Why: a ballpark range with context, then a pitch for the call, keeps the conversation going. Dodging it reads as evasive.
What do we add on the onboarding call?
The form gets the facts. The call gets the judgement.
- 30
If we could only book you meetings with one type of company for three months, which would it be?
Why: it forces a priority. Campaigns that try to reach everyone at once learn nothing.
- 31
Walk us through the last three deals you closed. How did they start, and why did they buy?
Why: recent wins beat the ideal profile on paper.
- 32
Which deals did you lose recently, and to whom?
Why: it shows who you really compete with and which buyers to avoid.
- 33
What would make a meeting a waste of your time?
Why: this defines a qualified meeting, which is what we're measured on.
- 34
What is the smallest first step a buyer can say yes to?
Why: the ask in a cold email should be small. A 15-minute look at something specific beats a 60-minute demo.
- 35
Who sends the emails, and who takes the calls?
Why: the sender has to be credible to the buyer, and the person on the call has to match what the email promised.
What should you read next?
Claude Code for cold email
How we use Claude Code to map verticals, run list waterfalls, score decision makers and analyse campaigns.
Who replies to cold email
Seniority data from 4,900 classified cold email replies, and why the middle of the org chart is worst.
How to choose a cold email agency
The seven criteria that separate strong providers from weak ones, and the metric to judge results by.
Want us to build and run the campaigns for you?
Danish Lead Co asks every one of these questions on day one, then builds the list, writes the emails and books the meetings. Made by Frederik Jakobsen at Danish Lead Co.