In today’s newsletter, I’m going to share a 4-step process we developed with a customer to book meetings with comparative logic.

Outbound prospecting is about catching the attention of your prospects, and showing them what they are potentially missing is a great way to get replies.

Here’s how I do it, step-by-step:

Step 1: Define a quantifiable problem

The first step is to have clear idea of a problem your prospects are trying to solve. You may be tempted to pitch your offering, but focusing on problems will get you more replies.

Finding a quantifiable problem is important, as it is the basis of the comparison you’ll use.

Example: Missed sales because SDRs don’t prospect existing accounts.

(Note: You can use my Cold Message System if you need help finding the problems of your customers).

Step 2: Ask if they can quantify it

Now that you have a clear idea of a quantified problem, you need to mention it in your cold outreach. The whole idea is to create FOMO with your prospects, by asking how much of this problem they are having.

Example: “Do you know how much sales you’re leaving on the table because your SDRs don’t prospect existing accounts?”

Step 3: Tease a calculator

If you did your research correctly, you should have the attention of your prospects. You may be tempted to directly pitch your offering, but you need to provide value so you maximize the chances of booking a meeting.

You can create value by sharing a simple calculator to help your prospects quantify the problem they are having.

Example: “If you’re interested, I can share a simple calculator to help you find that number?”

I took 10 minutes to create a simple problem calculator here. The idea is to help your prospect visualize a before/after situation and what they are missing by not doing anything.

Note that you don’t want to share the calculator before getting a reply. You just share it when they asked for it.

Step 4: Ask for interest

I don’t know about you, but if someone identified a problem I have and proposed to help me find the size of that problem, I’d be interested to know more.

Now if they start pitching their offering, I wouldn’t reply. That’s why you need to use a simple call-to-action to find out if your prospects are interested.

Example: “Should I send it over?”

Here’s how a cold outreach message could look like:

“Jack, noticed you recently got promoted to Head of Sales Development.

Do you know how much sales you’re leaving on the table because your SDRs don’t prospect existing accounts?

If you’re interested, I can share a simple calculator to help you find that number?

Should I send it over?”

And this is how you can create interest with your prospects using comparative logic.

TL;DR:

• Step 1: Define a quantifiable problem

• Step 2: Ask if they know about it

• Step 3: Tease a calculator

• Step 4: Ask for interest

Hope this helps!

Thibaut

In today’s issue, I will break down the failure of many SDRs to book outbound meetings.

Booking outbound meetings is more challenging than ever, mostly because money isn’t flowing as it used to. Prospects are careful with their budgets, and they are reluctant to take calls with stressed out sales reps.

But if you’re in sales, you still need to book meetings and to generate pipeline.

So today, I’m going to break down the 3 most common mistakes I see sales reps making with outbound prospecting, and what I’d recommend they do instead.

Mistake #1: Writing essays

I’m writing this newsletter right after a training session I gave to 20 sales reps. We went through their cold emails and they were making the same mistake as 99% of people I train.

Their emails looked more like essays, with convoluted sentences, buzzwords, and way too many words.

Imagine receiving a cold outbound message and having to spend time deciphering it. You would do it once and ignore every email that remotely looks similar.

This is what prospects are doing, and the reason you can’t get replies.

Mistake #2: Being inconsistent

Consistency is 80% of your success in cold outbound. Most sales reps I train have no prospecting routine when I first meet them, and those who choose to create one see quick results after a few days.

Here’s a typical week of an inconsistent SDR:

• Monday: Spend hours looking for 100+ new prospects

• Tuesday: Send a first touchpoint to a part of their list

• Wednesday: Send the remaining touchpoints to their list

• Thursday: No replies, 100+ follow-ups

• Friday: Still no replies, slowly becoming desperate

If this schedule looks familiar, then you’re doing something wrong.

Mistake #3: Not focusing on existing accounts

The last type of mistake I see all the time is the result of the “growth at all cost” model that was predominant in the tech industry until Q1 2022.

The last 5 years were exceptional in terms of funding, and the goal of most high-growth companies was to acquire new logos. If they could show that they were able to open new accounts, they’d get money. As a result, SDRs have been exclusively dedicated to opening new accounts.

However, things are different nowadays. If you can’t expand new accounts, you’ll have a hard time generating new opportunities, and you will miss your targets.

Instead, here’s what you can do:

The first thing you need to do is to reduce the size of your cold outbound messages. Write messages with 3 to 4 sentences that can be easily read on a smartphone without scrolling. For example:

Mary, saw you changed position around 5 months ago.

What are you doing to prevent your team from turning off prospects with pushy LinkedIn messages?

If you’re into it, I’d love to share a quick video on how your team can start genuine conversations with prospects on LinkedIn.

Should I send it over?

Second, build a prospecting routine. I wrote a detailed article on how to do that here.

Finally, review your strategy and start focusing on existing accounts. I started doing it a few weeks ago, and I have already booked 5 meetings and closed one deal with this strategy.

TL;DR

• Don’t write essays

• Don’t be inconsistent

• Don’t ignore existing accounts

• Do write short messages

• Do prospect every day

• Do focus on upsells and cross-sells

I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Thibaut

In today’s issue, I’m going to share a simple, 3-steps play I recently used to get a 60% reply rate, and a 67% meeting rate.

If you can replicate this play, you’ll be able to start key conversations with existing customers, and identify upsell opportunities.

Unfortunately, most SDRs focus on generating net new business, and they forget that easy opportunities can easily be found (and closed) with existing customers.

In 2023, upsells and cross-sells will help you reach your targets.

But without a solid expansion prospecting play, two challenges arise:

Challenge #1: You focus on booking tough meetings: you’re only trying to start conversations with prospects who never heard about you.

Challenge #2: You miss on easy opportunities: you’re not able to get valuable conversations with customers who already know about you.

You can overcome these challenges by creating upsell opportunities.

Here is a simple play I tried last week, and I got 3 replies and 2 meetings booked out of it:

Step 1: Identified 5 customers I worked with

In 2022, I’ve been selling all kinds of training and coaching to various types of buyers. A lot of them have purchased an online course, or a coaching session for their reps.

I’ve compiled a list of buyers, with the service they purchased, and the values of different products they bought.

If they bought more than one product, they are at the top of my list. I’ve also included the customers who had great outcomes.

It took me around 30 minutes to come up with a solid list, and I ended up selecting the top 5.

Step 2: Sent them a thank you email

Now that I knew who I wanted to reach out to, I started crafting a thank you email. I focused on the training they purchased, and the outcome they got out of it.

Here’s an example:

“John, how are you doing?

2 things:

1. I’ve been reviewing people I worked with in 2022 and I wanted to say thank you for having your reps join the program! Mary mentioned she cut her demo calls in half and managed to qualify opportunities faster.”

Step 3: Searched for problems

In the second part of the email, I asked if my customer knew about people who were struggling to reach their targets. I also teased a potential resource to help them with this specific issue.

Here’s an example:

“2. I’d be curious to know if you know of people who are having challenges reaching their targets. I may have something for them.

Thanks again for working with me!”

The results

After sending 5 emails, 3 customers replied (60% reply rate), and 2 booked a meeting with me (67% meeting rate). I was able to generate one opportunity, and I’m in conversations with the last customer who replied to book a meeting.

It’s also interesting to note that two customers asked for help with their business (upsell and cross-sell), but another one introduced me to people he knew with similar problems as them. That’s why I didn’t ask for introductions, but asked for problems.

And these are my 3 steps to creating upsell opportunities.

TL;DR:

• Step 1: Identify 5 customers you work with

• Step 2: Send them a thank you email

• Step 3: Search for problems

Cheers,

Thibaut

I just wrapped a 3 sessions consulting workshop with one of my customers.

They run a tech startup, and they are looking to find their product-market fit. They are already prospecting, but they are having difficulties speaking to the right type of prospects.

Here’s how their outbound motion is structured:

• Step 1: Build key account list for one month

• Step 2: Get account list approved by founder

• Step 3: Distribute approved account list to team members

• Step 4: Identify 1 decision-maker per account

• Step 5: Find data on the prospect (email, LinkedIn profile)

• Step 6: Enrol prospect into sequence

• Step 7: Send 3 to 4 LinkedIn messages and Emails before stopping the sequence

After running with this process for a few months, they asked me to run an assessment of their outbound process, and 3 major challenges emerged.

Here are the challenges, and how we worked on fixing them together:

Challenge 1: Their Ideal Customer Profile wasn’t clear

Like many other early-stage startups, my customers were trying to find their product-market fit. They knew what type of customers they would like to serve, but they didn’t have a clear idea of the type of companies, and job titles they should be approaching.

Each person in the organization had a different understanding of the type of prospect they had to go after.

Solution 1: Build an ICP Matrix

We sat down with the founders and started working on an Ideal Customer Profile matrix. It’s a simple document where we defined 3 types of Ideal Customer Companies, and 3 types of Ideal Customer Titles.

I won’t show you their ICP matrix, but here’s an example of what it looks like:

In today’s newsletter, I’m going to share my 5-step process to navigate conversations to book a meeting.

Human beings are constantly making decisions, and they use mental shortcuts to avoid wasting brainpower in doing so.

One of them is called the reciprocity bias. When you accept a gift or help from someone, you’re more likely to reciprocate. Think about the last time someone offered help, and how you’d answer if they’d ask for a service in return.

Here’s how I use this psychological bias to book meetings:

Step 1: Use a problem question

Before reaching out to a prospect, you should always ask yourself what kind of problem they are trying to solve. For example, I’m selling to VPs of Sales or Heads of Sales Development, and they are typically trying to solve problems like:

• gaps between forecasting and actual revenues

• SDRs turning prospects off with pushy cold outreach

I can use these problems in my outreach to get their attention, and show my understanding of their business reality.

You can use the formula: “How do you avoid/prevent {problem}?”.

Example: “How do you prevent your team from turning off prospects with pushy cold outreach?”

Step 2: Tease a reciprocity resource

If your prospects are currently facing the problem you mentioned, they may be interested in a resource to solve it.

You can use a reciprocity resource to help them. It can be any marketing material from your company, partners, or even competitors.

For example:

• Whitepapers

• eBooks

• Podcasts

• Webinar recordings

I recommend downloading the resource, hosting it in Google Drive, and recording a short video on why it is valuable.

You can tease this resource in your initial outreach message, just like this: “If you’re interested, I made a 5-step sequence that typically gets a 38% reply rate.”

Step 3: Ask for feedback

If your prospect replies, share the resource (either directly, or with a short video), and give them a few days.

You can then ask for feedback on the resource, to find out if it was useful. For example: “What do you think of the resource? Was it useful for your team?”

In most cases, your prospects will feel obliged to reply (because of the reciprocity bias), and you’ll be able to see if the problem you’re solving is important enough for them.

Step 4: Use a negative-reversing question

If the problem is important enough, you should be able to ask a few other questions, and even get some from your prospects.

A good way to ask for the meeting is to use a negative formulation. Instead of writing: “Should we book a meeting?”, you can use the following formula “Would it be a bad idea to…”

Example: “Would it be a bad idea to hop on a quick call so I can give you a few tips on how your team can use this sequence?”

Step 5: Drop a meeting link

If your prospect agree to the meeting, immediately drop a meeting link or ask them to share some availabilities.

Example: “Good, here’s a link to book a quick chat. You can also share your availabilities if you prefer.”

A meeting link is a productivity tool. It helps your prospects align with your schedule. However, some people may not like using meetings link. They would rather share their availability, and have you send an invitation.

And this is how I get around 27% of people who reply to my outreach to book a meeting with me.

And if you’re interested in grabbing the system I use to get a 38% reply rate, and between 11% and 27% of people who reply to book a meeting with me, then check The New Outreach System.

TL;DR:

• Step 1: Use a problem question

• Step 2: Tease a reciprocity resource

• Step 3: Ask for feedback

• Step 4: Use a negative-reversing question

• Step 5: Drop a meeting link

Hope this helps!

Thibaut