Demand-side cold outreach
Useful, personalized sales at scale
Hi all -
This week I’m thinking about cold outreach - emails, LinkedIn messages, even ads. Things that interrupt your potential buyers when they’re going about their days.
I’m on the receiving end of these and they are generally awful: Written from the “supply side” about YOUR product, because YOU have sales goals to achieve.
Guess what? I don’t care about your sales goals, your product, your TechCrunch article, or your recent funding round. And for all that is holy, STOP USING HUBSPOT TEMPLATES.
As I wrote last week, as a “business buyer”…
I barely have enough time in the day to get everything done
At any given time, I am fighting to make a select few things happen; there are also a couple of fires I’m trying to put out at any given moment
At best, I have a fuzzy understanding of my pain points & how to accomplish what I need to
If you have a product that would solve some of my pain points or help me accomplish my goals, I certainly don’t understand the alternatives to your product and why yours is better
I assume I’m similar to your target buyers: Zero time, zero interest in your message. And, most importantly, a few things to accomplish.
Real buyers have stuff to do; find the signals of what I’m trying to accomplish
In short, design your outreach around the things I’m trying to accomplish and I might actually respond. Stop thinking in personas; think in the combination of persona + situation.
You can find programmatic signals that give you hints of what I’m trying to accomplish, based on things like:
The time of year (e.g., quarterly OKR planning; summer hiring; Black Friday)
My company’s public signals (e.g., hiring/hired a new role; raised a funding round; posted an announcement on social media; attending an event; posted a new advertisement)
My competitors’ signals (e.g., customer announcements, any of the above signals)
My industry’s signals (e.g., new regulations or changes)
Don’t just use these signals to say, “Hey congrats on the new fundraise! Use my product.” Use these signals to assess how likely I am to be accomplishing what you can help me accomplish.
Draft your outreach to help me accomplish what I probably need help with
You’ve found a signal that I’m doing something big and need help. You can help.
Now, draft a message that will catch my attention and actually help me.
Here’s how I frame my email cold outreach.
Subject line:
Something to catch their attention
Content: Either the signal I saw, what I believe they’re trying to accomplish, or their desired end-state.
Body:
Signal + What they’re probably trying to accomplish right now + (optional) what we do + offer to help
Examples
Below are a few examples for friends’ companies:
OKR (goal-tracking) Software
Signal: Quarterly OKR planning. You could run a variant of this every quarter and it wouldn’t get old.
Outreach 1 timing: 3 weeks before the start of the quarter
Subject: Planning Q3 OKRs yet?
Body:
Hi {fname},
Have you started planning Q3 OKRs yet? Let me know if you need a sounding board - I’m working with companies like {insert} to build their OKR discipline so they waste less time and get more done. Happy to share what works & doesn’t.
Interested?
Outreach 2 timing: Day 1 of the quarter
Subject: Q3 OKRs launch on time?
Body:
How did your Q3 OKR launch go? Is your team is 100% aligned on what needs to happen?
Let me know - happy to help you think through the communication plan.
Outreach 3 timing: End of month 1 of quarter
Subject: How are you tracking towards Q3 OKRs?
Body:
Hi {fname} - I imagine this week is when you’re checking in on progress towards your Q3 OKRs. What I typically see after Month 1 is:
Your team scrambles to track how you’re actually performing vs. vaguely worded Key Results
You have to reprioritize your OKRs, some just fall off
You realize that your team didn’t REALLY understand the OKRs at the beginning of the quarter
Any of these sound familiar? If you want to prevent saying, “let’s just scrap Q3 OKRs, Q4 will be different”, I’m happy to share what I’ve seen from companies that do it extremely well.
QA Software
Signal: A target company just posted a job / hired someone in QA
Outreach 1 timing: Posted the job
Subject: QA engineer job post + automation roadmap
Body:
Hi {fname} - saw your QA engineer job post on LinkedIn!
If you’re automating with [industry standard automation software], I’d love to share how you can avoid the painful “Month 3 Roadmap Revision” that always seems to happen.
Do you have 20 minutes? I’ll share what I’m seeing from companies like {insert} who are managing to stay ahead of their roadmaps.
Outreach 2 timing: Hired
Subject: First project for {insert new employee name}
Body:
Hi {fname} - congrats on the QA hire! {name} looks like a great fit.
Know they’re onboarding now, but I’d love to share a potential 1-week project for them that could shave months off your automation timeline.
Do you have 30 minutes this week? I’ll run you through the project timeline & details.
Outreach 3 timing: 3 months post-hire
Subject: Automation roadmap delays
Body:
Hi {fname} - Is there a reason you’re not using AI software to speed up your Selenium deployment and fix broken tests?
In summary
Find signals that help you know what your buyer needs to accomplish.
Write briefly to catch their attention; tie it to what they’re going through right now.
Help them; you’ve seen many more companies go through this than they have.