Outbound Architecture + Efficiency

An ex-post obvious way to 2x-5x + your outbound production

Hi all —

Quick PSA: Just launched the new Reframe website and would LOVE feedback! (It’s not pretty, but I’m trying to get the offering clear before investing a ton in design. Appreciate any advice you have - reply to this email with your most brutal piece of feedback!)

I’m now serving as a “GTM Cofounder” for a few B2B startups. Usually when I first arrive, the #1 challenge is figuring out how to generate more sales meetings.

I’ve experimented with a lot in the past 6+ months, and have come up with a framework that’s really helpful for:

1. Figuring out what you should be doing to generate (& automate) pipeline

2. Executing f*cking fast

If you’ve spent time on LinkedIn, you see a bunch of narrow tactics. “Warm up your emails! Use AI! Personalize!” But narrow tactics are not a strategy. You can do all of those things and still be ineffective, still feel like you’re throwing shit at a wall in a disjointed way.

Here’s the graphic I’ve made to help put a bunch of different outbound approaches into context:

Basically, there are two “vectors” of outbound:

• How many channels are you using? There are 3 main channels for outbound: Call, email, and LinkedIn. If your approach uses more than 1 channel, this usually means you need a SDR to execute. If you use 1 channel, it’s easier to automate or outsource. Multi-channel is generally more effective than single-channel, but SDRs are hard to manage and expensive.

• How personalized is your outbound? There are 3 levels of personalization: No personalization (broadly targeting your ICP), Full 1:1 personalization (e.g., finding a specific thing about the person or company), or what’s called “Relevance” (which is in between, where you find a subset of contacts who you can reach out to with more than an abstract value prop, but less than 1:1 personalization). In general, the more personalized your outbound is, the better results you’ll get.

Now you’ve got a framework for thinking about outbound… but what do you actually do?

Here’s my secret. I usually start by layering on 3 approaches:

1. ICP Fit + Single Channel: For a lot of companies, I recommend high-volume outbound email. You can automate or outsource this, and it provides a steady base of meetings without needing a lot of thought.

2. Relevant + Single Channel: For almost all companies, I run a set of targeted LinkedIn automated sequences that aren’t 1:1 personalized, but aren’t a pitch slap either. Here’s my LinkedIn guide.

3. 1:1 Personalization + Multi-Channel: Most companies I work with have a salesperson or BDR. How do you get that salesperson super effective? Two lead sources from the above single-channel approaches:

   1. Prospecting companies that have a lot of opens to your outbound email (if you’re tracking opens)

   2. Prospecting companies where you’ve had a good conversation with a lower-level employee on LinkedIn

There’s much more to this - but I’ll pause here for today. Let me know if there are any specific things you’d like me to dig in deeper on! Examples:

• What kinds of experiments do I run for LinkedIn outbound? What tends to work?

• How do I track results?

• What do I do when nothing works?

• How do you automate outbound email?

• How do you warm up emails?

• WhAt aBoUt AI?!

Happy 4th,

Rob