Your tactics are often the symptom, not the problem.
Did some outbound coaching recently. Reps. Sales Leaders. Founders. All different stages. Most felt like their messaging, script, and cadence were off.
It’s reflected here every day. You’ll see 3 posts declaring cold-calling is dead today. Most content (me included) is about tactics.
Truth is tactics are often the symptom, not the problem.
If you’re not crystal clear on your vision, targeting, offers and how you’re keeping score - then your tactics will be off because they’re downstream from everything else that matters.
Vision - What are the rules of the game?
Drives buyer experience.
A compass - without it, your people can’t make decisions.
Rarely change if at all. Hire people who get it.
Top down. Non-negotiable. Self-policing.
Scratchpad - “Delight”
📈 Anthony Zhang - gets it (post).
Targeting - Who and why?
TAM = Ocean
ICP = Lake
Marketing = Pond
Outbound = Puddles
Get super specific on the buyers and businesses in the puddles.
Too many puddles = not enough volume to learn anything useful.
UserGems 💎 built a booming business making it simple to target past users/customers.
Jordan Crawford will build a booming business using job descriptions for targeting.
I used lawsuits + a website review + basic techno/firmagraphics to drive targeting for years. The data drove the who (business), why (buyers), the offers and the how (tactics). See it’s downstream.
Offers - What’s in it for your buyer?
You need compelling offers. Plural.
Buy Josh Braun's course. Watch his fantastic Pain Triangle stuff
Different offers for different puddles.
Asking busy buyers to give their most precious resource to a complete stranger isn’t a compelling offer. Yes - even if you send a Starbucks card.
Ryan Quindlen lightly roasts your customer proof on TikTok.
Jed Mahrle teaches you how to boost deliverability.
Score - Are you winning?
Your people need to know how to score.
You’ll lose your mind and great people if you just look at inputs and outputs.
Sensible marketers hopped off the MQL hamster wheel already - sales should too.
The relationship between the two (efficiency) is much more interesting.
For each prospecting play:
Meeting% - drive down over time.
Account/contactHit% - drive up.
Pipe% - drive up.
Close% - drive up.
Conversion is the real numbers game in outbound.
Challenge your people to deliver an efficient relationship between inputs and outputs.
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Now you can think about tactics. Since I’ve got you. For tactics:
Active accounts/contacts > # touches (dials, emails, etc.)
Correlation does not always equal causation - “This subject line delivered 102 meetings” is likely BS.
Tactics change rapidly based on what’s happening in the game.
Your people MUST own their tactics.
How can they be accountable for performance if they don’t?
How can you expect them to care about improving if you tell them what to say and how to say it?