How Rapid Light Communications went from manually searching for work to a repeatable outbound pipeline in under two months.
Rapid Light already knew how to do the work. Real fiber construction capability, crews, production history, equipment and industry experience. What it did not have was a repeatable way to get in front of the companies controlling new projects.
The owner had 31 LinkedIn connections and little interest in using the platform at all. He was working through Yellow Pages listings, calling the small number of people he already knew in the industry, and trying to figure out how to land a meaningful project within 90 days.
Create enough real conversations with the right people that Rapid Light could land a serious project within 90 days, without waiting on referrals, luck, or someone stumbling across the company online.
In under two months, Rapid Light had onboarded with three different companies and secured a fiber project worth approximately $1.3 million. The important part is not that LinkedIn worked. It is that a contractor with almost no online network built direct access to decision-makers and turned those conversations into real business.
Rapid Light was not a startup trying to prove it could perform. The field experience and the ability to execute fiber work were already in place. The bottleneck sat entirely in business development.
Before ZeroDesk, the process was painfully manual: Yellow Pages listings, cold calls, a handful of existing industry contacts, and guesswork about where work might be available. No central list of ideal companies. No repeatable messaging. No systematic follow-up. No way to know whether the right construction or operations leaders were even seeing Rapid Light.
That tiny starting network is the whole point. The campaign did not begin with a built-in audience, an established personal brand or years of LinkedIn networking. It began almost from scratch.
The strategy changed from broad prospecting to targeted business development. Instead of asking "who can I call today?", ZeroDesk worked backward from the exact kinds of companies that award or subcontract fiber construction.
We identified companies that could realistically need Rapid Light as a subcontractor or additional field resource: prime contractors, broadband builders, fiber construction companies, ISPs and organizations managing active telecom infrastructure work.
Not generic corporate contacts. Outreach centered on operations leaders, construction leaders, project managers and other people close enough to the work to know where crews were needed.
The message was deliberately plain: this is what Rapid Light can do, this is where crews can work, and we are looking for upcoming projects where an additional contractor could be useful. The goal was to start a legitimate industry conversation, not force a sales call.
A response is not automatically handed to the client. ZeroDesk continues the conversation, answers basic questions, clarifies capabilities, discusses geography and availability, follows up, and determines whether there is a real next step.
The owner gets involved when the prospect is ready for something that actually requires him: a call, onboarding, pricing discussion, quote or project conversation.
ZeroDesk handles the prospecting, follow-up and early back-and-forth. Rapid Light stays focused on operating the company and closing real opportunities when they are ready.
The LinkedIn campaign alone generated 211 accepted connections, nearly seven times the size of the entire starting network. Those connections were not collected for vanity. They were targeted people inside the companies Rapid Light wanted relationships with.
30.8% is the response rate among accepted LinkedIn connections, not among every person contacted. Acceptance rate on targeted invitations was 21.1%. We publish the denominator because a reply rate without one is not a number, it is a claim.
The original need was to create enough opportunity to land a meaningful project within 90 days. The outbound system began producing relationships and onboarding opportunities well before that deadline.
The three onboardings matter beyond the immediate project. In fiber construction, onboarding creates a channel for future work. Once a contractor is approved, known and inside a company's vendor ecosystem, that relationship keeps producing opportunities as new builds and scopes appear.
The headline result arrived inside the same sub-two-month window in which Rapid Light was building those relationships. For a high-ticket infrastructure contractor, this is why outbound economics differ from ordinary lead generation. You do not need hundreds of customers. One well-matched project can change the year.
Rapid Light did not become more capable after hiring ZeroDesk. The capability was already there. What changed was how systematically that capability was put in front of the market.
The campaign focused on companies that could actually award or subcontract the kind of work Rapid Light performs.
We pursued people close to operations and construction instead of filling a database with irrelevant contacts.
The outreach sounded like one industry professional speaking to another. Crews, capabilities, geography, upcoming work.
Most opportunities do not happen on the first message. ZeroDesk kept conversations alive and followed up over time.
The owner did not spend his day sorting through responses. We carried the early conversation until there was something worth his attention.
The point is not that every fiber contractor will land a $1.3 million project in 60 days. Sales cycles, geography, capacity, relationships and timing differ for every company.
The takeaway is that contractors do not have to rely entirely on referrals, old contacts, bid boards or luck to find their next project.
Instead of running ads and hoping the right companies find you, we go directly after the commercial accounts you actually want. We build the list, find the decision-makers, handle the outreach and follow-up, manage the early conversation, and pass it to you once the prospect is ready for a call, quote, onboarding or project discussion.
A prime contractor, ISP, network builder or construction partner can represent far more than one transaction. The right relationship creates repeat work across markets, phases and future projects. That is why ZeroDesk is built around qualified conversations rather than lead volume.
31 connections. 3 new company onboardings. A $1.3M project.
All in under two months.
ZeroDesk helps high-ticket B2B companies build direct access to the people who control the opportunities they want.
A 30 minute call. We map your ideal customer profile and show you how many companies actually match it. No pitch deck.
Results shown are from one client engagement and are not a guarantee of future performance. Project timing and outcomes vary based on market conditions, capacity, targeting, sales cycle and client execution. Campaign figures are taken from the client's LinkedIn outreach dashboard, all-time view. ZeroDesk · josh@zerodeskai.com · zerodeskai.com