The Challenge

A sales engine running on instinct, not infrastructure

RetailSonar had a motivated team and a clear product. But the operational foundations weren't keeping pace. Their HubSpot had quietly become a liability — 700+ duplicate contacts, 200+ duplicate companies, and hundreds of conflicting custom properties. Nobody fully trusted the data.

On top of that, their main sending domain was bouncing at 13–16%. Every sequence they sent was degrading their sender reputation. They were treating 600–700 accounts the same way, with no tiering. And in a world flooded by AI-generated sequences, their SDRs were still defaulting to email when they should have been picking up the phone.

What We Delivered

A HubSpot audit and a full outbound architecture

Our engagement consisted of two core deliverables: a deep HubSpot audit and a systematic outbound architecture that RetailSonar could implement on their own terms.

In a 90-minute session we mapped the full state of their CRM. The findings were clear: it needed to be rebuilt from the ground up, not patched.

• Database cleanup — deduplication of 700+ contacts and 200+ companies, full property audit
• Lifecycle stages — implementing native HubSpot stages instead of the custom-built workarounds that had multiplied over the years
• Pipeline consolidation — merging fragmented country-by-country pipelines into a single, scalable structure
• 400+ properties removed — replaced with native HubSpot fields wherever possible
• Email infrastructure — alternative sending domains to protect their main domain, moving bounce rates from 13–16% toward the 2% threshold
• Sales Workspace activation — proper lead stages, target account tiering, and lifecycle management for the sales team

Beyond fixing the CRM, we mapped out a complete outbound architecture built around their specific market and ICPs.

• Three-tier account model — AAA accounts (Aldi, Lidl, Carrefour) get high-touch, signal-triggered outreach; AA accounts get semi-automated sequences with manual call follow-up; A accounts get fully automated touchpoints
• Signal monitoring framework — defining which triggers matter: new C-suite hires, expansion announcements, new locations, industry events, sector news
• Event-based outreach workflow — HubSpot as backbone for pre- and post-event outreach, with Clay as the enrichment and orchestration layer
• Calling-first methodology — when a trigger fires, the first action is a call. Not an email
• LinkedIn warm-up on autopilot — continuously connecting SDRs with target stakeholders so that when a trigger fires, they can message directly
• Unified reporting — email, LinkedIn, and call activity consolidated into HubSpot as the single source of truth

Implementation

They ran with it themselves

What makes this engagement stand out isn't what we built — it's what they built. RetailSonar took the audit findings and the playbook and implemented the vast majority of it internally.

Their operations lead ran the HubSpot overhaul himself: removing the 400+ properties, activating lifecycle stages, setting up the Sales Workspace, building lead scoring, and creating the workflows to keep it all running. The team aligned on what had been validated: events and calling work. AI-flooded email sequences don't.

This is precisely the type of partnership we look for — we provide the strategic clarity and the system design, the client brings the internal ownership to execute.

Results

What actually changed

The Takeaway

Advice, not execution — and that was enough

RetailSonar didn't need us to run their outbound for them. They needed the clarity to stop second-guessing what they already suspected, and a concrete framework to act on it.

Our audit confirmed what they intuitively felt — and gave them the confidence and the blueprint to move. In an environment where everyone is flooded with AI-generated sequences, meeting people at events and picking up the phone still works.

Outbound Catalyst helped them rediscover that, systematize it, and make it stick.