--- title: "How we built a $38M tracked pipeline for a defense technology supplier in six months. | Stone Haven Capital Group" description: "85 qualified program and prime-contractor opportunities, on infrastructure that never touched the corporate domain. Six months. A mid-sized US defense technology supplier. No new capture hires, no conference circuit, no waiting for a program office to already know the name." canonical: "https://stonehaven.capital/showcase/defense-technology-supplier" last-updated: "2026-08-22" --- > 85 qualified program and prime-contractor opportunities, on infrastructure that never touched the corporate domain. Six months. A mid-sized US defense technology supplier. No new capture hires, no conference circuit, no waiting for a program office to already know the name. Stone Haven Capital Group Schedule a Call Case study · Defense Technology Supplier # How we built a $38M tracked pipeline for a defense technology supplier in six months. 85 qualified program and prime-contractor opportunities, on infrastructure that never touched the corporate domain. Six months. A mid-sized US defense technology supplier. No new capture hires, no conference circuit, no waiting for a program office to already know the name. - $38,216,800 of tracked pipeline secured across 16 advanced pursuits in six months. - 2,436,560 emails to 487,312 programme and acquisition contacts, producing 2,680 replies at 0.5%. - 536 positive replies became 402 booked meetings, 291 of them held, and 85 qualified opportunities. - Average contract value reached $2,388,550, up 1.6x from a $1,500,000 baseline. - What went wrong: the whole estate sat with a single sending provider. 01 ## Did they get a good result? Yes, and here it is without decoration. Before we started, every dollar of growth came from incumbency and renewals, which capped both the size of a deal and the number the team could chase. Six months later the supplier had 402 booked meetings behind it, 291 of them held, 85 qualified opportunities worth $105,428,300, and $38,216,800 of tracked pipeline across 16 advanced pursuits. What happenedThe number Tracked pipeline secured$38,216,800 across 16 advanced pursuits Average contract value~$2,388,550, up 1.6x from a $1,500,000 baseline Qualified opportunities85, carrying $105,428,300 Booked opportunity pipeline$209,073,600 across 402 booked meetings, 291 of them held Earlier-stage interested pipeline$225,168,400 across 536 conversations Emails sent2,436,560 over six months Leads contacted487,312, of which 485,363 were new Replies2,680, a 0.5% reply rate, or 10,184 and 2.1% counting out of office Positive replies536, 20.0% of all replies Bounce rate2.4%, 58,477 bounces The full programme in the sending platform. 02 ## Did you get them in front of the right people? That is the question that actually matters, and volume does not answer it. Anyone can put 2.4 million emails in front of people with no program, no funding line and no authority to act. 85 opportunities cleared a qualification bar built around defense procurement rather than around enthusiasm, carrying $105,428,300 of pipeline. 16 of those advanced far enough to become tracked pursuits worth $38,216,800. The proof of targeting is in the conversion rather than the volume. 2,680 replies produced 536 positive ones, 402 of those became booked meetings and 291 were held. Only 85 survived qualification, which is the number that matters, because in this market a conversation without a funding line attached is a conversation that goes nowhere. The pipeline as the client sees it. One week of the client's calendar, midway through the programme. 03 ## What worked, and why ### We moved every cold email off the supplier's corporate domain. A defense supplier cannot afford deliverability problems on the domain it uses to talk to the program offices it already serves. In this sector reputation is the whole product, so no cold volume ever touched it. We stood up 684 dedicated sending domains carrying 2,052 mailboxes, every one authenticated on SPF, DKIM, DMARC and MX before a single email went out. Warmup ran continuously on all 2,052 for the life of the programme, and only half of them carried campaign volume at any point. The rest sat in reserve and rotated in as the older domains matured. The estate carried 2,436,560 sends across six months and finished at a 2.4% bounce rate, 58,477 bounces in total. Inbox placement held at 93% across the estate. Defense contact data ages faster than most, because people rotate postings on a fixed cycle, so a bounce rate in this range is the realistic ceiling rather than a failure. Every domain authenticated before a single email left, and none of them the supplier's own. Why that works: the domain carrying every existing program relationship stayed untouched, while the engine carried all the risk on infrastructure that was built to be replaced. ### We built the list around who shapes a requirement, and excluded everyone who does not. The people who decide a supplier gets onto a program are program and product managers, chief engineers, capability and requirements leads, and the contracting and acquisition officers alongside them. They sit inside government program offices, at primes and their major subcontractors, at federal systems integrators, and at the research organisations that seed a requirement years before it is written. The list was built on that profile across the United States and allied procurement markets. The exclusions mattered as much as the inclusions. Consultancies, staffing firms, resellers without an engineering function, and every market outside the client's export eligibility came out of the list entirely, which removed most of the original pool before a single email was written. The first pull, before program phase or export eligibility was applied. The same market after the exclusions and program signals went on. Why that works: an org chart tells you who could buy. Program phase, published requirements and hiring tell you who is about to. ### We wrote for people who are briefed for a living. The opener carried one capability claim and one question, with nothing between them. This market reads procurement documents all day and recognises a warm-up paragraph instantly. All of it left as plain text, spun at every line, so identical copies never went out alongside each other. The live sequence and the opener behind it. Why that works: a program manager decides whether to keep reading in about four seconds. Anything before the capability claim spends those four seconds on nothing. We ran a six-touch cadence on widening gaps and qualified every reply against funding before capture saw it. Six steps with gaps that widened at every stage, four variations on the opener and two on each follow-up, all A/B tested. A qualification desk sat on the replies and checked each one against a funded program, the right acquisition authority and a live or near-term procurement pathway before anything reached the capture team. Why that works: in this market the expensive mistake is a capture lead spending three months on a conversation with no funding line behind it. The gate is what stopped 451 positive replies from becoming that. ### We reviewed performance weekly and cut losers fast. Every week the angles were reviewed against qualification rate rather than reply count. An angle that produced replies without funded programs behind them was switched off regardless of how good the reply rate looked. 04 ## The six angles we test, in every market Nobody can predict which message a market will bite on. The honest position is that the market decides and you find out by asking it. So the opener runs six variations at once, one per angle, and the reply data picks the winner. The six hold up across sectors because they are built on how a decision gets made rather than on what is being sold. 05 ## 1. The direct pitch Say the capability in one sentence and ask whether it is needed. Works in markets where people are used to being briefed and dislike being warmed up. We build the sensor processing chain that sits behind the radar. Is that a gap on the current program? 06 ## 2. The status quo challenge Question the thing nobody in the program has questioned. Lands when the incumbent answer has gone unexamined for years. Most programs still spec this the way it was written in 2014. Has anyone looked at what that costs you in weight now? 07 ## 3. The teardown Offer a specific read on something of theirs. Costly to produce and almost impossible to ignore, so it goes only to the accounts worth it. We pulled the published requirement and marked the three places where the schedule and the spec disagree. Want it? 08 ## 4. The short window Give a reason this conversation matters now. Only honest when the window is real, which in this market it usually is. If the increment locks in the autumn, the time to look at alternatives is the next few weeks. 09 ## 5. Partnership or collaboration Frame it as two parties rather than a sale. Carries markets where teaming is the normal route onto a program. We are looking at the same increment from the subsystem side. Worth comparing notes before either of us commits? 10 ## 6. Value first Open with something usable whether or not they ever reply. Usefulness first, interest second. We tracked how the last four awards in this category were scored. Happy to send the summary over. 11 ## How we use them They launch together across a split list. A few weeks in, the reply data has already named the one or two the market wants, and the rest are switched off before they waste any more contacts. Which angle wins is genuinely unpredictable. That one or two of them will win is not. Running six at once is how we make that a certainty instead of a bet. The same frameworks port to LinkedIn with shorter wording and the same underlying angle. 12 ## What did not work, and what we did about it Three, and we would rather put them in front of you now than have you meet them later. ### We put too much of the estate on one provider. The first build ran the majority of volume through a single enterprise mail provider, because it was the one with the best placement in testing. Six weeks in, that provider tightened its thresholds across the board and a large share of the estate slowed at once. Nothing was wrong with the domains. The programme simply had one point of failure and found it. What we changed: volume was split across three providers with dedicated sending IPs on each, and no single one was allowed to carry more than half the estate. A repeat of the same event now costs a fraction of the throughput. Two campaigns auto-paused in the same day, both on the same provider. ### We went back to the list too early. With a tight market the temptation is to re-engage the same contacts as soon as a new angle is ready. We came back inside six weeks on the first refresh. Reply rate on the second pass was less than half the first, and the complaints that did arrive all came from that cohort. What we changed: the cooldown moved out to ninety days and no contact was touched again until the angle behind the approach had genuinely changed. A tight market can only be worked so many times, and spending a pass badly costs contacts you do not get back. ### Our subject lines were too clever for the audience. The first set was written to stand out. In a market where the inbox is full of contract notices and program correspondence, anything that reads like marketing gets treated as marketing. The sends were landing and the replies were not coming, which narrowed the problem to the one line a program manager sees before deciding whether to open anything at all. What we changed: subject lines were rewritten flat and literal, naming the capability or the program area and nothing else. Reply rate improved inside a fortnight without a word of the body copy changing. Nothing this large runs without error, and a case study showing none has simply deleted the section. 13 ## Why this works in defense procurement specifically Every supplier we speak to in this market has the same shape of problem. The product is proven, the programs they are on renew, and there is no mechanism at all for getting onto a program they have never touched. That works until the current increments mature. Three things make outbound work unusually well here: - The buyer announces themselves. Program phases, published requirements, budget lines and engineering hiring are all public, often years before a solicitation exists. That signal is searchable, which means the timing problem solves itself. - The award carries the cost. At an average contract of roughly $2,388,550 with follow-on work behind it, the programme pays for itself several times over on a single result. Very few channels have that arithmetic. - The ask costs nothing to answer. Asking whether a capability gap exists on a forming program is a question a program manager can answer in one line, and the reply quality reflects that. 14 ## Why would this work for your business? It may not, and there is no price attached to finding out now. Read across the table. This works ifThis does not work if Growth depends on incumbency and the programs you are already onYou are already on every program your capacity can absorb There are thousands of program offices and primes you could serve and no way to reach themYour entire market is a dozen offices you already brief regularly A single award is worth seven figures and carries follow-on workYour economics cannot absorb a programme that pays back across an acquisition cycle Something observable tells you a requirement is formingNothing separates a program that needs you this cycle from one that never will Someone can qualify replies against funding and authority before capture sees themEvery reply has to land on the capture lead If you land on the left column, what transfers is the method rather than anything unusual about this client. A supplier with real technical credibility, programs that renew, and no way to reach an office it has never worked with. Everything above came out of process, and the process does not change for you. 15 ## One more thing worth understanding The question nobody asks until the end is what happens to the estate when the engagement stops. An outbound programme leaves behind 684 domains and 2,052 mailboxes with six months of sending history on them. That history is the asset. A domain with a clean record and aged reputation takes months to rebuild and cannot be bought, which is why the handover matters more than most of what happens during the engagement. So the estate transfers. Domains, mailboxes, authentication records and warmup state go to the client, along with which domains are burned, which are rested, and what each one can carry. A client who takes the programme in-house afterwards starts from a working estate rather than from a spreadsheet of what we did. The alternative is common and worth naming. Plenty of programmes run on infrastructure the agency owns, which means the day the contract ends the client has a list of results and nothing they can send from. We would rather you never have to ask the question. 16 ## Before and after Before After Route onto new programsincumbency and renewals only, and thin visibility into program offices a repeatable engine alongside incumbency, 402 booked meetings and 291 held Tracked pipelinenone from outbound $38,216,800 across 16 advanced pursuits Average contract value$1,500,000 $2,388,550, a 1.6x increase RFP cycleabout 27 months about 19 months, down 30% Outbound volumenone 2,436,560 emails to 487,312 contacts 17 ## If you want to know whether your market has this in it Fifteen minutes is usually enough. Describe the programs you want to be on and what an award is worth across its life. We come back with how many of those offices are actually reachable, the conversation volume that is realistic against that pool, and a straight answer on whether outbound is the right instrument for you. A no gets said plainly on that call. Neither side gains from finding out in month three. ## Want to know whether your market has this in it? The first conversation is short. You tell us who your buyers are and what one is worth to you. We tell you how many we can actually reach, what the meeting volume looks like, and whether outbound is the right lever for you at all. If we think it is not, we will say so. 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