300+ Qualified Meetings Across the UK and Gulf for Clarity

The Challenge

Post-raise pipeline pressure

A funding round changes what a go-to-market team is measured on. Before the raise, the job is proving the product works. After it, the job is proving the market is bigger than the one you have already reached, and proving it fast enough to matter at the next board meeting. Clarity closed a $12m round in September 2025. A-Sales started calling in November. The gap between those two dates is the whole context for this engagement: building an in-house SDR function to cover two regions would have taken most of the following year.

Two markets that behave nothing alike

Clarity needed the United Kingdom and the Gulf covered at the same time, and these markets do not respond to the same outbound. The UK is a mature, heavily targeted market. Buyers there have seen every outbound technique and have well-developed defences against all of them. The Gulf works differently: business is done by voice and by relationship, the working week is different, the calling windows are different, and the decision structures inside large groups and government-linked entities are different again. Running both from one script and one playbook does not work.

The buyer sits outside IT and is hard to find

The people who buy customer experience software are heads of customer experience, directors of customer success, chief customer officers, customer service managers and heads of customer care, along with the operations directors, heads of operations and COOs who own the budget around them. None of these people are reliably listed in the contact databases outbound agencies run on. CX titles are non-standard, they vary enormously between companies, and in many organisations the function is new enough that it does not appear on an org chart at all. There is no clean export for this persona. It has to be researched account by account.

Regulated buyers ask harder questions first

Clarity sells into finance, healthcare, telecoms and government. In those sectors an AI product that touches customer conversations raises security and compliance questions before it raises product questions. The prospect has to arrive at a first meeting already understanding that this is a platform built for their compliance environment, or the meeting is spent on questions that should have been settled beforehand.

The Approach

Calling as the primary channel, by design

A-Sales ran this account almost entirely on the phone: over 99% of the meetings booked came from calling. In the Gulf this was not a fallback position, it was the correct read of the market: business there runs on voice, and a phone call from someone who understands the market opens a door that an email does not. In the UK the logic was different but pointed the same way. The CX persona is impossible to target accurately from a database, so if the list is built by hand anyway, the phone converts that research into conversations far more efficiently.

Two programmes, not one

The UK and the GCC were run in parallel with separate scripts, separate calling windows and separate qualification notes. Calling windows were set to the local working week in each region, which in the Gulf means a different week entirely, not just a different timezone. Meetings were booked in the prospect's local time, never the client's. Messaging was rebuilt per market: what resonates with a UK head of customer experience at a listed company is not what resonates with a group operations director inside a Gulf conglomerate.

The persona was mapped by hand

Every target account had its CX and customer service leadership identified individually: names, titles and reporting lines, researched rather than exported. This is slow and it is the only thing that works for this buyer. A database export for "Head of Customer Experience" returns a fraction of the real universe and a large share of people who left two years ago. A-Sales also targeted upward deliberately: where the CX function was thin or newly formed, the conversation went to the operations director or COO who owned the outcome instead.

Regulated framing built into the first call

Because Clarity sells into finance, healthcare, telecoms and government, the security and compliance position was built into the opening rather than left for the demo. Prospects arrived at the meeting already knowing this was a platform designed for their environment.

“In the Gulf, business is done by voice. Calling was not the fallback, it was the correct read of the market.”

The Process

Phase 1: Foundations

• ICP and persona definition with Clarity across both regions
• Account universe defined separately for the UK and for the GCC
• CX, customer service and operations leadership mapped by hand at every account
• Qualification standard agreed in writing before any calling started

Phase 2: Two-market launch

• Separate scripts written for the UK and for the Gulf
• Calling windows set to the local working week in each region
• Regulated-industry framing built into the opening
• Calling live as the primary channel from the start

Phase 3: Scale and iterate

• Scripts rebuilt monthly against live objection data
• Objection library built from real calls in both markets
• Targeting weight adjusted as sector performance became clear
• Coverage expanded across six GCC countries

Phase 4: Widen the footprint

• Europe and North America added alongside the two core markets
• Sector mix broadened across banking, insurance, telecoms, healthcare, aviation, retail, hospitality and government
• Continuous list refresh, since CX titles move faster than most

Ongoing

• Weekly reporting on booked, held and rejected meetings
• Rejected meetings reviewed and fed back into targeting

How We Define a Qualified Meeting

A meeting only counts when it meets criteria agreed with the client before calling starts. Right company profile, right title, genuine interest, confirmed slot, and a prospect who knows who they are meeting and why.

If a meeting does not meet the standard, it does not get billed. Clarity can reject a meeting, and rejections are reviewed rather than argued about. That feedback loop is the fastest route to better targeting, so we ask for it.

A-Sales earns the overwhelming majority of its revenue from the per qualified sales meeting fee. The incentive runs the right way from day one.

Results

• 300+ qualified sales meetings booked in 10 months
• Over 99% booked by phone
• Meetings across six GCC countries plus the UK, Europe and North America
• 97% show rate on tracked meetings
• 44% of meetings with organisations of 1,000+ staff
• Buyers in banking, insurance, telecoms, healthcare, aviation, retail and government
• Engagement ongoing

Who we reached

Individual prospect accounts stay unnamed, because that is Clarity's pipeline. Titles booked: Chief Customer Officers and Chief Customer Support Officers, Heads of Customer Experience, Directors of Customer Success, Heads of Customer Care and Customer Service Managers, Customer Experience Managers, Chief Operating Officers, Directors and Heads of Operations, and Vice Presidents of Operations.

Sectors covered: banking, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, healthcare, aviation and airlines, retail, hospitality, government administration, real estate, software and IT services, manufacturing. Markets: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, United Kingdom, plus accounts in Europe and North America.

What Made the Difference

We matched the client's own footprint rather than our convenience

Clarity built the company around London and Riyadh. The outbound programme was built around the same two markets, run as two separate programmes rather than one script with the timezone changed.

Calling was chosen for the market, not for the agency

In the Gulf, voice opens doors that email does not. Reading that correctly at the start is worth more than any amount of copy testing afterwards.

The CX buyer cannot be bought as a list

Customer experience titles are non-standard and poorly covered by contact databases. Hand-mapping the persona account by account is slow, and it is the only method that produces a usable universe.

Sell upward when the function is young

Where a CX team was newly formed or thin, the operations director or COO who owned the outcome was the better entry point. Rigid persona rules cost meetings.

Handle the compliance question before the meeting, not in it

For regulated buyers, security is the first question. Building it into the opening meant demos were spent on the product rather than on reassurance.