Just Between Us

A Personal Note About Leads

They're not numbers. They're people.
Hey,

Can I tell you something that feels a little vulnerable?

I hate the word "leads."

There. I said it. In the world of sales and marketing, that's almost heresy. But hear me out.

When we call people "leads," we reduce them to something we can collect, sort, and process. They're not leads. They're Sarah, who just launched her design agency and is terrified about cash flow. They're Marcus, who left a stable job to start a consultancy and wakes up at 3 AM wondering if he made a mistake. They're people with stories, fears, hopes, and businesses they're trying to grow.

"Every 'lead' is a human being trying to build something meaningful. Remember that, and everything changes."

I built Suplex because I kept watching people forget this fundamental truth. I saw tools that treated contacts like entries in a database. Features designed to "nurture leads" that actually just annoyed humans. Dashboards celebrating "leads generated" without any mention of relationships formed.

A True Story

Early in my career, I got a call from a "lead" I'd emailed months before. I didn't recognize the name. When I pulled up my notes, I saw I'd sent him a template email and marked him as "not interested" after he didn't reply.

Turns out, he'd been going through a divorce. His business was barely surviving. He wasn't "not interested"—he was fighting for his life and didn't have bandwidth to respond to strangers.

We talked for an hour. I couldn't help him then, but we stayed in touch. Two years later, he became my biggest client. Because I treated him like a person, not a lead.

That's why Suplex works the way it does. It doesn't just find contacts—it helps you understand them. It researches their businesses, their challenges, their recent wins. So when you reach out, you're not pitching to a "lead." You're offering something valuable to a fellow human being.

The AI in Suplex is trained to write emails that respect this reality. Not generic templates. Not sales-y scripts. Messages that acknowledge the person on the other end has a full life, limited time, and a spam folder full of people who forgot they're human.

What This Means in Practice

  • Research before you reach out. Actually understand who they are.
  • Lead with value, not your pitch. What can you give them?
  • Respect their time. Short, clear, easy to respond to—or ignore.
  • No means no. Don't "nurture" people who aren't interested.
  • Your data about them stays local. Because their information is theirs, not yours to monetize.

I know this sounds soft for a business tool. But here's the thing: the hardest-nosed salespeople I know all agree on this. The best deals come from genuine relationships. The best clients stick around because they trust you. And trust is built one human interaction at a time.

Suplex helps you scale those interactions without losing the humanity. You can reach 200 people in a day, and every single one of them should feel like you wrote that email just for them. Because in a way, you did. You cared enough to understand them before you reached out.

So yeah, I hate the word "leads." But I love the people behind them. And I built a tool that treats them that way.

Here's to remembering the humans,

Founder
SUPLEX
Trying to be better about this every day
Next time you're about to send a cold email, stop and ask yourself: "Would I want to receive this?" If the answer is no, rewrite it. Suplex will help, but the intention has to come from you.