99: How to Build Outbound From Scratch

The 4-Phase Practical Prospecting Method

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Read on jed.substack.com

Read time: 6min

Welcome back to The Practical Prospecting Newsletter! Today I’m breaking down the 4-phase process I use when working with clients to build outbound.

Please note: this is a big topic to cover in one newsletter. So I will be linking to previous posts where you can find a deeper breakdown on specific topics.

Agenda:

• Phase 1: Targeting

• Phase 2: Messaging

• Phase 3: Tools & Infrastructure

• Phase 4: Optimize & Scale

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Phase 1: Targeting

The goal of phase one is to get crystal clear on your ICP.

There are three steps to this:

1. What type of accounts should you target?

2. What personas should you target?

3. What signals should you look for?

You need a data-backed answer for each question. Because this is the foundation of everything else you’ll do - so it can’t be rushed!

If you already have customers and inbound leads, start there (read this post for a more in-depth breakdown of how to do this).

The goal is to document the common characteristics of the customers who are ALREADY paying you so you have a data-backed answer for which accounts, personas, and signals to target.

Once you have that, document the answers here:  ICP Document.

Now use that data to create 3-5 segments that you’ll be building outbound sequences for.

A segment can be any combination of account type, persona type, and signal.

Here’s an example of what one segment could look like:

• Account Type: 201-100 employees, 20-50 sales department size, United States, SaaS

• Persona Type: Director, VP & C-Level of Sales

• Signals: Using Hubspot, hiring SDRs & AEs

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Phase 2: Messaging

The goal of phase two is to create relevant messaging for each of our segments.

There are four steps to this:

1. Create your offer

2. Create your email templates

3. Create your sequence outline

(1) Create Your Offer

I did an in-depth post on this a month ago - you can read it here.

In short, if you want a high performing email sequence, you can’t offer a “demo” or “discovery call”. You need something tangible and valuable to standout and get more responses.

I highly recommend you read the post above because breaks everything down in full detail.

(2) Create your email templates

There are only two types of email templates you need for an outbound sequence:

1. Value Emails

2. Context Emails

Read this post for a full breakdown of how to create them.

(3) Create your sequence outline

If you’re building a brand new outbound motion or already have one but aren’t getting results, I recommend starting with an email-only sequence for two reasons:

1. When you’re first starting outbound, you don’t know much. So you need to test many hypotheses. The most scalable way to do this is via email.

2. Once you find a message that is converting well via email, you can double down with LinkedIn and phone steps (which require much more of your time).

With that said, this is the sequence format I use:

• Day 1: Email #1 (new thread)

• Day 4: Email #2 (follow-up)

• Day 8: Email #3 (new thread)

• Day 11: Email #4 (follow-up)

When we’re ready to add LinkedIn and phone, we don’t add them as actual steps in the sequence.

Instead, I take everyone who’s engaging with the emails (i.e. opening/clicking) and load them into a power dialer to be called — Phoneburner, Nooks & Orum are the main ones I’ve used.

Then we’ll do our LinkedIn touch while dialing (i.e. as the phone is ringing that’s when we’ll send the prospect connection requests, messages, etc.).

However, if you want to see a high-performing LinkedIn-only sequence read this post.

This sequence process allows to be as efficient as possible and ensures we’re focusing our energy on the warmest leads.

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Phase 3: Tools & Infrastructure

The goal of phase three is to set up the right tools and infrastructure to run these campaigns effectively.

There are three steps do this:

1. Deliverability tools & infrastructure

2. Sequencing & dialing tools

3. Data tools

(1) Deliverability tools & infrastructure

Read this post for a full breakdown.

Here are the main takeaways:

• Create new domain for cold email (with DNS set up correctly)

• Warmup those email addresses for at least 2 weeks

• Validate your lists before sending (i.e. keep bounce rates low)

• Once you’re sending, keep volume lower than 50/day per email address

(2) Sequencing & dialing tools

You have to decide if you want the best point solutions or the best all-in-one solution.

I typically prefer the former. Which is why I use Smartlead for email because of it’s deliverability features and (usually) Nooks for phone because of it’s power/parallel dialing functionality.

But if you’d rather have the best all-in-one tool, I usually recommend Apollo.io because you’ll have phone, email & LinkedIn sequencing.

(3) Data tools

I couldn’t possibly recommend one data provider. Or even a few.

This is because it all depends on your ICP and the type of lists you need to build.

To determine which data provider you need, go back to phase 1 and look at the segments you created.

Then test out as many different data providers as you can (most have a free trial) to see which ones give you (a) the most data in those segments (b) the most accurate data in those segments, and (c) the cheapest data in those segments.

For most of my clients, I use a mix of Clay.com, Apollo.io, and Prospeo.

For my clients who’s ICP aren’t active on LinkedIn, I often use Outscraper — a tool that lets you scrape companies from Google. This is good for small businesses and non-tech companies.

Ultimately, you should have several data providers regardless of your ICP.

It’s also important to have a simple and well documented list building process. If you’re a leader and plan on having your reps pull their own lists, you need to make this process stupid simple — otherwise things fall apart.

I prefer to outsource list building to a VA once I’ve done it myself and have a well documented process.

Remember, list building is the foundation of every campaign you run. So make sure you do it right.

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Phase 4: Optimize & Scale

Phase four is all about optimizing the campaigns you’ve launched (and testing new ones) until you find one that works — then, you scale it.

How do you know if a campaign is working? We look at three metrics:

1. Open rate

2. Reply rate

3. Positive reply rate

Start with open rate, if it’s below 40% then keep tweaking deliverability, subject lines and preview text until you hit to your desired metric.

Now move onto reply rate. If it’s below 5%, keep tweaking the targeting, value proposition, offer, and CTA until you hit your desired metric.

Now move onto positive reply rate. If it’s below 25%, again tweak the targeting, value proposition, offer, and CTA until you hit your desired metric.

Ultimately you want to get to a point of predictability - where you can say (with confidence) “If I put X leads into this campaign, I know I’ll get roughly Y meetings”.

This is also known as your Meeting Rate (i.e. total meetings booked / total leads added to campaign).

Ideally you want this number between 1-5% before you “scale” the campaign.

That’s why A/B testing is so important. Particular, knowing HOW to A/B test and WHAT to A/B test based on your data. Read this post for more details.

Once you’re consistently in that 1-5% meeting rate for a campaign, it’s time to increase volume.

That’s also when I would layer on phone and LinkedIn steps like we talked about earlier.

Thanks for reading,

Jed

P.S. I’m going to start posting more short-form content on Instagram soon. If you’re active there, gimme a follow: @jed_mahrle