Thread by @Ryohara

Some weekend tips/ thoughts about outbound prospecting… a thread… some things we’ve seen @leadiq

1. Average cold email replies rates dipped below 1% for the first time in 2021. Prospects are learning to tune us out.

2. Cold call connect rates dipped below 3%. If you ask people… even ones that work in sales, how often they answer a cell phone from a number they don’t know…it’s extremely low. Desk phones and work numbers are no longer plugged in or setup, especially in SaaS. Dialers say 3%.

3. This has caused something that I call “the outbound paradox” where as reply rates and connect rates go down, activities go up to make up for it. The more activities, the less responses. It’s like moving in quicksand.

4. Social selling getting worse too. More @LinkedIn connection requests with “fake personalization” that is vague and generic is teaching prospects to tune out outbound activities. Too many reps doing “me first” engagements or reshaping company content.

5. @Gartner_inc says that sales teams touch an average 8.5 applications just to get to a point where they can create an opportunity.

6. So if doing more activities isn’t the answer, what is? Well… we could spout off personalization combo’d with persistence, but most sales teams practice the wrong kinds of personalization and persistence.

7. Personalization isn’t working just dynamic fields in a sales engagement platform or a different value proposition for a given persona.

8. 10 years ago when we were prospecting you could get away with customizing prospecting to a person’s company and role, but today that leaves too much of the activity to luck. That kind of personalization is what we call Personalization 1.0.

9. Many companies are now personalizing to an individual’s interests or experiences. This is much more effective, and what we called Personalization 2.0… but as more AEs and SDRs do this, it’ll become less effective. How many emails can a prospect get about their college?

10. There are so many solutions for each market today, that there are 10 different ways to solve a problem at a company. Value props can be mad libbed for all same companies in space. So what’s better than personalizing the individual?

11. The winners of the next stage of prospecting will spend more time researching their prospects, and finding things they have in common with the individual. Value props will be driven by what helps the individual prospect. 1/3 prospects are unhappy where they work.

12. This is what we call Personalization 3.0 and it’s driven by your sales reps shared experiences and backgrounds. What do they have in common with the prospect? Who on your team has the most in common with them? That’s who should be assigned that account.

13. On the social side, since only 3-5% of the total addressable market is ready to buy at at given period, sales reps need to be staying top of mind with prospects by becoming marketers. They need be given their target market access to the resources they get at their company.

14. This could be their network of people they work with, insight their company is publishing and feeding (cough cough like this thread), or soap-boxing and promoting prospects through their channels.

15. If your sales reps aren’t doing things with your buyers publicly, you are wasting their talents. Most of them are amazing talkers and can be coached to be good listeners. Keep content short and consistent and it’ll increase response/call back rates.

16. Marketing should join sales teams in their account based efforts by huddling with them monthly and making account based campaigns for one account at a time. Sure awareness is cool, but meetings from target accounts are even better.

17. This means treating account based content like a Super Bowl ad. Put a ton to thought into it, make it about your prospect and where they work, then let sales use persistence here to get it seen since they can handpick who you attempt to see it.

18. All of these points are moot if sales ops can’t make the process to reach out to a prospect or account as easy as texting a friend. The more steps it takes to ping a prospect, while tracking the activity, the less time sales has to to be thoughtful. (Why @leadiq exists).

19. If the activity sales teams do are unique, creative, and personalized enough, the excuse for follow up becomes way easier and faster to execute on.

20. At the end of the day, the biggest differentiator when prospecting is your sales team, who they are, what life experiences they have had. Sales reps are the differentiator.

21. Follow these thoughts and you should be able to achieve double digit response rates.

22. Answer these questions: how is the prospect special to you? Why are you contacting them? Who are you (in one sentence…value prop here)? And what do you want them to so?

23. Keep subjects vague but related to the body of the email. If the prospect printed your outreach out and showed people would anyone reading it understand everything?

24. And last but not least… talk like you would talk in real life. Be a human. That’s how you get double digit reply rates.