How BaltMilk opened 60+ export sales talks with B2B lead generation
BaltMilk opened 60+ export sales talks with food makers across Europe in about 4 months. Automated B2B lead generation reached 5,565+ decision makers.
Written byVytas MikulėnasFounder, Lean Sales Systems- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 7 min read
TL;DR
- BaltMilk, the dairy ingredients brand of the Baltic milk cooperative Pienas LT, wanted more food makers in Western Europe to buy its milk proteins and functional blends.
- Lean Sales Systems built an email and LinkedIn outreach system for 3 of its salespeople: 2,650 people reached by email and 3,641 LinkedIn connection requests in about 4 months.
- 301 people replied and 81 replies were tagged Interested. After removing reactions and thank-you notes, that is 60+ real export sales conversations about samples, specs and prices.
On this page
BaltMilk makes milk protein powders and functional dairy blends in Lithuania and sells them to food makers abroad. Lean Sales Systems gave its export team an automated email and LinkedIn outreach system. In about 4 months it reached at least 5,565 decision makers at dairy, ice cream and sports nutrition companies across Europe and opened 60+ export sales conversations.
| Client | Industry | Service | Market | Period |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BaltMilk (Pienas LT) | Manufacturing, dairy ingredients | Managed lead generation | Western and Northern Europe | August 2025 to December 2025 |
Key results
| Decision makers reached | Replies | Opportunities | Manual work saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5,565+ | 301 | 60+ | about 930 hours |
Opportunities are replies tagged Interested in Reply.io, after we removed emoji reactions, thank-you notes and sales pitches sent to us. Hours saved is an estimate, explained below.
About BaltMilk
BaltMilk is the dairy ingredients brand of Pienas LT, a large milk cooperative from the Kaunas region of Lithuania. It makes milk protein concentrate, micellar casein, native whey protein, milk permeate and functional blends for yogurt, cheese, ice cream, bakery and protein bars, with Halal, Kosher, Organic and FSSC 22000 certification.
The challenge
BaltMilk had modern production and certified products. What it lacked was a steady way to start conversations with the right people at food makers in other countries.
| Challenge | Why it hurt |
|---|---|
| Big, famous competitors | Buyers in Western Europe already work with large ingredient brands from Denmark, the Netherlands, France and Germany. A newer Baltic brand has to earn every first meeting. |
| More than 1 decision maker | Ingredient buyers sign the order, but R&D teams decide if an ingredient works in the recipe. Both had to be reached. |
| A long sales cycle | Every deal goes through specs, samples and tests before price talks. It needs many early conversations to win a few customers. |
| Generic first emails | The old cold email was a list of products sent to "Dear Mr./Mrs.". It gave buyers no reason to answer. |
| A small export team | A few salespeople cover the whole of Europe, next to trade shows and existing customers. There was little time left to find new buyers by hand. |
| No shared tracking | New leads were logged in the CRM by hand, so it was hard to see who had been contacted and what they said. |
Markets and focus
We split the market into 5 buyer groups. Each got its own list and its own message from 1 of 3 BaltMilk salespeople.
| Market | Who we reached | Companies | Volume | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dairy and ice cream producers in Europe | Ingredient buyers, purchasing and R&D managers, executives | Large and mid-size dairy, cheese, yogurt and ice cream makers | 1,754 email contacts, 2,000 LinkedIn requests | 39 tagged Interested |
| Trade show exhibitors (Anuga and a Food ingredients show) | Owners, managers and buyers | Food and ingredient companies exhibiting at the 2 shows | 544 email contacts, 689 LinkedIn requests | 15 tagged Interested |
| Sports nutrition and protein brands | Founders and product managers | Protein bar, powder and sports food brands | 215 email contacts, 288 LinkedIn requests | 21 tagged Interested, 12.56% email reply rate |
| Members of LinkedIn dairy groups | Dairy professionals and executives | Members of large dairy industry groups on LinkedIn | 442 LinkedIn requests | 4 tagged Interested |
| Gelato makers | Owners and production managers | Gelato and ice cream makers in Europe | 130 email contacts, 222 LinkedIn requests | 2 tagged Interested |
The solution
We built a system that finds the right companies and people, writes to them by email and LinkedIn, and follows up. BaltMilk's salespeople only answered the people who replied.
| Building block | What it did for BaltMilk | Why we used it | Tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Lead research | Built lists of dairy, ice cream and sports nutrition companies, trade show exhibitors and members of LinkedIn dairy groups, with the buyers and R&D people at each company. Each group got a short message about its own products, with an offer to send a presentation or samples. | A short, relevant question gets answers. It replaced the long product list sent to "Dear Mr./Mrs.". | LinkedIn Sales Navigator, trade show exhibitor lists |
| 2. Email finder and verifier | Found work emails and checked each one before sending. | Emails to dead addresses push a sender into spam. 98.87% of emails reached a valid address. | Email finder and verifier tools |
| 3. Automated outreach tool, a sequencer | Sent emails, LinkedIn invites and follow-ups from 3 salespeople, on schedule, and stopped when someone replied. About 4 touches per contact. | 1 steady process for a small team that is often away at trade shows. It reached both buyers and R&D people. | Reply.io, LinkedIn |
| 4. Hand-off to sales | Replies landed in the salespeople's outreach inbox, tagged by status, with a report every 2 weeks. The team moved good leads into its own CRM (customer database), Microsoft Dynamics, by hand. | Nothing got lost between a reply and a sample offer, and the team could see results by campaign. | Reply.io inbox, Microsoft Dynamics |
| Extra: trade show targeting | Wrote to exhibitors of the Anuga food fair and a Food ingredients (Fi) show around the show dates. | Companies at a food or ingredients show are buying or launching products right then. | Exhibitor lists, Reply.io |
What made the difference. A new buyer group. Demand for high-protein food is growing, so we added a campaign for sports nutrition and protein bar brands in December 2025. In its first weeks it got a 12.56% email reply rate and 21 of the 81 replies tagged Interested. Many asked for samples, a product sheet or a price for a first order.
What changed
These are tracked results, not estimates. They cover the campaigns Lean Sales Systems ran from August to December 2025.
| Metric | Result | Tracked in |
|---|---|---|
| Decision makers reached | At least 5,565: 2,650 by email and 3,641 LinkedIn connection requests. Some people got both. | Reply.io |
| Emails delivered | 98.87% reached a valid address | Reply.io |
| 3,641 connection requests, 1,011 accepted (27.8%) | Reply.io | |
| Replies | 301: 106 by email, 195 on LinkedIn | Reply.io |
| Email reply rate | 4.0% overall, 12.56% in the best campaign | Reply.io |
| Replies tagged Interested | 81: 51 by email, 30 on LinkedIn | Reply.io inbox |
| Opportunities | 60+ after removing reactions, thank-you notes and pitches sent to us | Reply.io inbox |
| Time to first interested reply | About 1 week after the first emails | Reply.io |
| Sales team hours on prospecting | Close to none. The system did the research, writing and sending. | Project setup |
Most interested buyers asked for a presentation, a product sheet, a sample or a price for a first order. Requests came from dairy groups, ice cream makers and protein brands in many European countries.
Extra benefits
- R&D reached, not only buyers. Messages went to both ingredient buyers and R&D teams, the people who approve a new ingredient.
- Trade shows worked harder. Exhibitors at Anuga and a Food ingredients show got a message around the show dates, so show time turned into more conversations.
- A new buyer group found. Sports nutrition and protein bar brands turned out to be a strong market for milk proteins.
- Every contact tracked. Each reply sat in 1 inbox with its status, so the team could see who was contacted, when, and what they said.
- Reusable assets. BaltMilk kept the lists, the messages that worked and a lead recycling campaign for people who did not answer the first time.
What this could be worth
The numbers below are estimates, not results reported by BaltMilk. We keep them apart from the tracked results on purpose.
Work the system did
| Estimate | Value | How we calculate it |
|---|---|---|
| Value of outreach work | about €25,000 | 5,565 decision makers x €4.50, the typical in-house cost to research and contact 1 person in Lithuania |
| Manual work saved | about 930 hours, or about 6 months of 1 full-time person | 5,565 x 10 minutes to find, research, write to and follow up with 1 person; 160 working hours a month |
This is the value of the activity, not a return. Much outreach never turns into a deal. It shows the work the system did instead of people.
Projected deals within 12 months
| Scenario | Opportunities that become customers | Projected deals |
|---|---|---|
| Pessimistic | 5% | 3 |
| Average | 10% | 6 |
| Optimistic | 15% | 9 |
Assumption: 5% to 15% of interested buyers become customers within 12 months, a typical range for mid-market B2B sales. Ingredient deals take longer because of samples and tests. BaltMilk does not share deal sizes, so we do not estimate revenue.
What happened next
In December 2025, Lean Sales Systems shared advice on email deliverability for BaltMilk's own newsletters and started a lead recycling campaign from the salespeople's own mailboxes, with new messages to people who had not answered before.
A system problem, not a hiring problem
Most manufacturers treat export growth as a hiring problem: add a salesperson, or ask the team to send more emails between trade shows. It is a system problem. Lean Sales Systems builds the research, outreach and follow-up system, and your team has the conversations with buyers. See more results in our B2B case studies.
FAQ
How fast did BaltMilk get its first interested buyers?
The first reply tagged Interested came about 1 week after the first emails. Most interest came in September and October, and again in December, when the sports nutrition campaign started.
How much time did BaltMilk's salespeople spend on it?
Almost none on prospecting. Lean Sales Systems built the lists, wrote the messages and ran the email and LinkedIn outreach. The salespeople answered interested buyers, sent product sheets and samples, and moved good leads into their CRM.
Who did BaltMilk target?
Ingredient buyers, purchasing managers and R&D teams at dairy, cheese, yogurt and ice cream makers in Europe, plus trade show exhibitors, dairy industry groups on LinkedIn and sports nutrition brands.
