16 ms·

A cold outreach strategy that works

271 points by jger15 7y ago

codingdave 7y ago
This fell flat for me. "Researching needs" started out talking about understanding the need of your audience, which is correct... but then devolved into google-stalking them to learn their hobbies. And the rest of the piece sounded like Sales 101, not a new approach. Which also means that those of us who are bombarded by cold contacts from sales guys pretty much see all these actions for what they are - sales pitches. That doesn't mean we won't listen if you show us a product that solves a problem... but it does mean that "follow up after a few days" when we don't respond is not going to increase our desire to engage with you. Your fellow sales folk may commend you for being "scrappy" and persisting to close a deal, but those of us who you are trying to actually sell to are just as likely to mentally blacklist you as annoying.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
  Stuff like this article isn't meant to be guaranteed success, just more successful than if not. For example if you don't do outreach you have no chance. So this improvement in success rates is worthwhile.
- goatherders 7y ago
  My company does cold outreach for tech businesses and well over 80% of the affirmative responses we get come after the initial touchpoint and we have "followed up after a few days."
  - codingdave 7y ago
    How many cold outreaches never respond? That is the real question - not how many deals can you close from the people who respond, but how much more could you close if you had an approach with a 90%+ response rate?
- tsomerville 7y ago
  He is talking about how to get a job - not sell you something.
  - codingdave 7y ago
    That does explain some of it... but was completely unclear because he literally said at the top, in bold, "it's a strategy with fundamental principles for any cold outreach."
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Isn't getting a job at least in part about selling yourself?
scottfr 7y ago
This is a great point and also very applicable to sales generally. There's definitely a continuum between "hyper target / completely customized" and "spray and pray" and each person/company needs to find the right point on that continuum for themselves. My company actually just put out a blog post last week on this showing how to quickly create customized emails while still leveraging templates [0]. [0] https://blaze.today/blog/best_sales_cold_email_templates_and_snippets/ https://blaze.today/blog/best_sales_cold_email_templates_and...
- _jal 7y ago
  Spam like this earns an immediate "remove all email addresses from your lists @ourdomain.com and let me know that you are suppressing them from your future mailings", ccing your mail provider's abuse address. The second mail gets your domain blocked and I tell your provider they're on notice. Some of us still take spam seriously.
  - goatherders 7y ago
    I recognize we start from different places on this, but unrequested email does not necessarily equal SPAM. We had a guy a few months ago who threatened all kinds of litigation and reporting etc. when we reached out cold. At the same time, one of his colleagues responded with interest and just before Christmas their company signed a 5-figure annual deal with our client to provide an endpoint security solution they needed for their managed services practice. Put another way, if I honest to God had a gold bar with your name on it and contacted you by email to say "when can we meet up so I can give you this gold bar" and you replied and we met up and I gave you your gold bar, you wouldn't view my message as SPAM at all because now you have a gold bar that is worth a bunch of money. Hey, free gold bar!@ But when it comes to cold outreach many people defer to "I didn't ask for this email....SPAM SPAM SPAM!" Sometimes what's being offered isn't a good fit, doesn't provide ROI, etc. But sometimes it turns out to be a gold bar. I don't think that a business reaching out and saying "You guys provide X, we have a solution that does Y and has helped other companies that provide X in a meaningful way" is remotely the same as a Nigerian Prince selling Viagra.
C4stor 7y ago
I wonder how significant it is in the US, but in France, securing an internship is hardly difficult. Interns tend to barely get paid (when they do) and a lot of companies have no problem letting them rot for half of the internship duration. You could probably get an internship almost anywhere if you're willing to do the most annoying crap half of the day, and nothing the rest of the time. So, I don't know how significant is "I got an internship through this method" to prove that a method is good (but then again, maybe in the US culture it's actually something significant !)
- deleted 7y ago
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- snazz 7y ago
  Internships are very competitive at places like Google. At less prestigious companies, they're less likely to be paid well and are easier to get.
  - C4stor 7y ago
    Ok, makes sense then ! In France, when I was a student, it was quite often a matter of "we take 10 interns but have only one full time position afterwards, so good luck to everyone !", so it was staying in the company that proved quite competitive.
- _jal 7y ago
  In most industries, internships are just another class differentiator. Tech is different, in that the best internships actually pay, but in other fields internships are one of the main entrypoints into a field. If you can't afford to live in, e.g., NYC and work for free, that door isn't open.
- peterwoerner 7y ago
  At my company , our goal is to hire 50% of our interns to full time work, that is, it is one of the main methods for recruiting entry level employees.
- perl4ever 7y ago
mrfusion 7y ago
I’d like more help with step one. Just finding the contact information. I’ve tried connecting over linked in and never gotten a response.
- goatherders 7y ago
  There are hundreds of tools available for finding everything from email addresses to phone numbers to physical addresses for work. Apollo.io, Hunter.io, LeadIQ just to get you started. Most have some tier of "free" if you only need a handful of contacts per month.
  - minkzilla 7y ago
    Who does one contact at random medium size or big sized company?
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Please do not phone. Maybe that's not universal, but I basically don't pick up the phone if I don't recognize the caller--or at least think because of area code it may be someone I should answer. With my work number and never check messages case, I don't even have a physical phone attached to my line.
    - georgespencer 7y ago
      I am a grumpy git, but… Please also do not email. It feels like every week I'm removing my corporate contact information from some obnoxious website which sells my email address having not obtained my permission to store or process it. Presumably somewhere, long ago, there was a CEO or founder who responded positively to cold outreach from a Ukrainian outsource dev team or Indian QA company, but I find all cold outreach to be unwelcome. Making it more personal just means I have to type my "politeno" text shortcut instead of "gdprsmash". People celebrate and mythologise the 0.1% of cold outreach success stories and ignore the fact that 99.9% of it is irritating spam.
      - 7y ago
amirathi 7y ago
Great advice if you absolutely want that ONE job at this ONE company. If you are in that boat then it's probably worth it to spend ~10 hours creating something valuable to offer. Most people generally have a set of companies that are ideal for them in a tier'ed manner. In that case, more efficient way would be to choose ~5 companies, do a lot of homework about their business & write to key people at these places telling in ONE paragraph what you can do for their business. If it fails, choose next ~5 and so on. It falls somewhere in-between spending 10 hours of effort on 1 application & mass applying to 50 companies without any effort whatsoever. This is also how effective sales teams work.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  You get part of those 10 hours "for free" just from the basic due diligence that you should apply to determine if you want to work for the company/department/team in the first place.
deleted 7y ago
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BlackCherry 7y ago
This blog post over complicates and mythologizes an extremely simple process. That is to not be embarrassed or ashamed to ask people you want something from what you can do to get it. Additionally, this is survivorship bias. His emails sounded very professionally immature and while this companies leadership may have found it endearing, I could easily see other groups of people finding it off putting. What this guys effort signaled to me is that he’s probably annoyingly overeager, but willing to basically do whatever I want him to do whenever and however long I want him to do it. In other words he’d be a good lackey. If you want to shamelessly signal that you’d be a decent lackey for an obscure to medium startup this may be decent advice. And this may not be a bad thing, I know Casey Neistat’s employee Jack Coyne did something similar and it opened up a lot of doors for him.
- rsp1984 7y ago
  The way I see it he was just very motivated to get the job / internship. I didn't find his emails "professionally immature" either. For sure I'd much rather invite / interview him as opposed to one of the 100s who just send their CV via email with not much else.
  - BlackCherry 7y ago
    To clarify "professional immaturity" does not mean personally immature/childish. It means he comes across as extremely green, new to the professional world, etc.
- notahacker 7y ago
  I think it also depends what you're looking for. If you're applying for one of multiple already-existent temporary positions for inexperienced people enthusiastic about learning on the job, appearing to be desperately keen on working for that company specifically probably gives you the edge over many other candidates that might have slightly more impressive universities on their CV. Some fields like marketing might appreciate creative approaches to hacking their recruitment process too, though they'll be more interested in whether your powerpoints are actually good. If you're a mid-level software engineer trying to get a well-paid job at a company working on completely different technical problems to your skillset and not actively hiring, it's probably wasted effort.
hirako2000 7y ago
It's a non scalable outreach tactic. It's not a strategy. Yes it has a good chance to work, if you are willing to spend hours researching your target, hours producing free content for that target, and insisting until the target gives up and give you what you want.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Why does everything have to "scale?" It's an SV-bubble cliché that's really getting tired.
- ghaff 7y ago
  >Yes it has a good chance to work So, in other words, it is a good strategy if you genuinely are very interested in working for that particular company. Sure, sending out hundreds of form emails is a different strategy. But I'm not sure it's a better one. Mind you, I'm not necessarily advocating, say, doing an unpaid internship in general--though that may be the price of admission in some industries. i.e. Spending multiple months for a shot at a position. But spending a day researching and preparing for an outreach to a company you think you'd really like to work for doesn't strike me as excessive.
- Dockson 7y ago
  It doesn't have to be scalable when it only has to work once.
dt3ft 7y ago
relevant: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/05/23/missionu-self-styled-alternative-higher-education-closes-after https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018...
danial 7y ago
Patrick, if you’re reading this, I enjoyed this article. It reminds me that if you spend a little bit more time researching your prospect, you are more likely to get positive results. Another lesson is that it helps to focus on a few prospects you really want to work with, rather than spray and pray. Thank you for sharing.
- patrickrivera 7y ago
  thanks, Danial! exactly. the strategy isn't the literal tactics I took (e.g., spending ten hours, reaching out to one company, etc.) the strategy is thinking about cold outreach as a sales process and adapting it to your situation.
minkzilla 7y ago
Who does one contact at a medium to large size company? Obviously contacting the CEO would not work.
- yread 7y ago
  Founders@ might work
petercooper 7y ago
I'm the person who gets these sorts of emails at my company, and just a few words in one of his emails really caught my attention! "Would love to work on this mission with you and the team" .. yeah, yeah, generic blah, everyone says that. "and I won't take it for granted." Ok, wow, I rarely have people make promises like that. It sounds genuine and even if it's not, it's a point I can pull someone up on later on if they're screwing around. Sending off some generic corporate speech will rarely work with me, but if someone acts a little more personably and shows they have some sort of emotional skin in the game, I'm all ears.
- travisjungroth 7y ago
  > if someone acts a little more personably and shows they have some sort of emotional skin in the game, I'm all ears. Which why generic corporate speech is just an arms race of faking that you have emotional skin in the game. Saying you'd "love to work on this mission with you and the team" was once enough. Now, you also have to say that you "won't take it for granted" to catch your attention. I wonder what the next step will be.
  - chrismarlow9 7y ago
    > I wonder what the next step will be. https://youtu.be/JWdZEumNRmI https://youtu.be/JWdZEumNRmI ?
  - petercooper 7y ago
    I guess. But if someone comes up with something new, that shows they recognize the banality of the corporate speech and came up with something new. Almost no-one actually bothers to do this (judging from years of banal, generic bizdev type emails I've received).
tom_mellior 7y ago
I think this post tries hard to claim something that wasn't quite the case. The author did not overcome a "no". They "overcame" a "sure, next summer might work". Which, given that they were a student, was really a "sure, whenever you are free might work"; the company assumed that they would be studying during the fall. So what remains is that in the initial mail, the author presumably failed to mention that they would be free already in the fall. If they had, it looks like the company would have happily interviewed them for their fall internship program. So my reading is that there really was no "no" at all to overcome, just some unfortunate initial communication. Including the fact that the company created the impression that they "weren't hiring", while in fact they were.
mkchoi212 7y ago
A lot of people may think this blog post is either over complicating stuff or stating the obvious. While slightly true, you'd be surprised at how many people miss the points highlighted by the author. I get so many cold emails that don't hit any of these points and I just end up deleting them immediately.
PedroCandeias 7y ago
I'm seeing some negative comments that focus on the article specifics. So I thought I'd say well done Patrick for reaching your goal using creativity and the right kind of persistence. Thank you for showing the actual steps you took and sharing your thought process. I've been in software almost 20 years and due to some incredibly poor timing am in need of finding my own door of opportunity, so I found your post inspirational. Thank you.
- patrickrivera 7y ago
  thanks, Pedro! yep. you can adapt the idea of research, add value, and handle objections into whatever permutation works best for your situation. that's the strategy part. best of luck, you can do it :)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- steve76 7y ago
  Bring back guesting on the record. Should start from the top. Life is fun. People are naturally happy. If it's not right or fun, don't do it.
MomchilIvanovK 7y ago
The article provides good value. But it would be better if the guy (Patrick) also included the script he used to reach out. 1. Research is important - no doubt about it. Without knowing your prospects, you can't do anything to persuade them. 2. Offer value - is also true. 3. Overcome obstacles - also true! But I'll add one more - baby steps. Baby steps means that you shouldn't ask to hire you in your first cold email. It feels like a lot of work to do and CEOs typically don't have the time. Instead propose them a time when you can chat more about it so the CEO can see if you are a good fit, etc.
- patrickrivera 7y ago
  Patrick here. Agreed. In the initial outreach I gave some context and asked to meet for coffee. Here it is: "Hi Adam, My name is Patrick Rivera and we have not met, but since hearing about MissionU on the Rich Roll podcast I've been thinking about how MissionU has the opportunity to improve the future of education. I've spent the last two years trying to get an internship in management consulting but was repeatedly told I didn't have a chance because I don't go to a target school. Although I eventually succeeded, I realized there are millions of people today that don't have pedigree, but do have potential. I think MissionU would be a grreat fit for me because I'm interested in empowering these people to develop skills needed to maximize their potential Additionally, I heard you say on Lewis Howes' podcast that one of MissionU's challenges is identifying cities to expand into. I've attached some recommendations based on my research. Would love to connect over coffee to discuss what you're working on at MissionU and see if there's any way I can help as I'll be in SF until Thanksgiving. Thanks in advance for your time!"
reese_john 7y ago
Derek Sivers has proposed a similar strategy: https://sivers.org/gethired https://sivers.org/gethired
arturm 7y ago
Most jobs come from referral. Scalable cold outreach strategy is key to getting a job in tech these days. Does anyone still apply online?
- Etheryte 7y ago
  How do you suppose referral works when you don't have any contact with the company you're eyeing? I've applied for every job I've had online, save for the first one. It can be a messy process, but if you bring real value, you get noticed fairly quickly.
- joejerryronnie 7y ago
  About half the positions I staff are from referrals and half are from randomly submitted online resumes. The quality of team members have ended up being roughly equivalent.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I'm not sure how those two statements go together. Do a lot of people really refer individuals they don't know at all outside of a cold outreach just for a shot at a referral bonus? All three jobs I've gotten in the last 20 years have come through people I know. (One was a referral; the other two were getting hired by someone I knew.) But these were people I actually did know and had worked with in some manner.
scapecast 7y ago
I wonder if the people that are condescending about Patrick's effort have ever done cold outbound prospecting and sold anything in their lives. But who am I to make assumptions... Patrick, great job for: 1) trying something different and being persistent and polite, but not annoying 2) reaching your objective, and 2) documenting it in a post. You've got the result on your side, and you found one possible way to get there. Are there others? Sure! Get an intro via a mutual connection, etc. You chose the one that worked for you given your constraints / circumstances. When I saw your slide, my immediate reaction was "he must have been at Accenture". Looks like the templates haven't changed since I left in 2013 :-)
- Macha 7y ago
  > I wonder if the people that are condescending about Patrick's effort have ever done cold outbound prospecting and sold anything in their lives. But who am I to make assumptions... I'm sure cold outbound prospecting is very hard and has a non-zero success rate. The fact that it might be hard for the person doing it doesn't mean it's not an unwelcome intrusion for the rest of us.
IMTDb 7y ago
> In dating, "no" always means "no". But in sales and recruiting, “no” doesn’t always mean “no”. What does say "no" in sales and recruiting ?
- plastodon1 7y ago
  > The price of the car is $2000, are you interested? > No > The price of the car is $500, are you interested now? > Yes
  - downerending 7y ago
    > I make $50K per year, are you interested in going out? > No > New job. Now I make $5M per year, are you interested now? > Yes :-)
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I looked at a used car at a new car dealer a year or two ago, and when I didn't follow up, they didn't just call me back, but they started calling two, three times a day, practically every day. They literally wouldn't give up until I answered the phone, even though I didn't want to talk to them because I was freaked out at how much they were calling. They didn't however, offer to sell it for $500. And I'm never, ever, buying a car from that dealer. In 50 years I will remember that, even if there was one bad apple salesman or one stupid boss who forced him to do it. So I think it's too glib to say dating and sales are different. Ghosting and people who won't take no for an answer are upsetting things that happen in both settings. People do both because they perceive it's in their interests.
  - IMTDb 7y ago
    > The price of the car is $2000, are you interested? > No > The price of the car is $500, are you interested now? > No > When will you be interested by a new car ? > Never > Can I call you back in 3 month ? > No * 3 month later * > The price of the car is $2000, are you interested? > No ...
- golemiprague 7y ago
  No certainly doesn't mean no in dating, I am not sure why this guy is saying it, maybe lack of experience.
tagami 7y ago
^ old sales guy. "no" means "know". They need to know more about the FABs (feature advantage benefit) you are offering to solve their problem.
deepspace 7y ago
FTA: " Following up is so crucial that enterprise sales teams have software to automate follow ups." As someone on the receiving end of sales solicitations, a lack of follow-up is the most frustrating thing imaginable, and I don't believe that it is a solved problem right now. I suspect that some widely used enterprise sales software (maybe Salesforce?) recently developed a bug that messes badly with the follow up process. I have recently seen many interesting and perfectly targeted outreach messages in my inbox, for products that I am genuinely interested in. So far, so good - something is obviously going right. But then I reply to the message, and instead of the sender following up with me, I start getting multiple copies of the first message delivered from random people at the same company. Replying to these messages only increases the flood of solicitation messages, until I have to resort to blacklisting the entire company domain. What a waste of my time, and what a lost opportunity for the companies running the flawed software.
- dvasdekis 7y ago
  A friend works at BeeCastle (https://beecastle.com/ https://beecastle.com/) which aims to address this exact niche. Systemic but carefully curated sales approaches. Free trial available.
hellofunk 7y ago
If I told you I had an outreach strategy with a perfect record that could be made available to you, is that something you might be interested in?
stared 7y ago
> But in sales and recruiting, “no” doesn’t always mean “no”. Where I should start? I dived too deep into dating - partly because I was in the process of writing "Dating for Nerds", and partly because my ex-girlfriend was a sexologist/sociologist (who at that time was writing her master's thesis "Market Metaphors in Dating"). There are many sales metaphors for dating, especially in PUA lingo (including all about the target, pitch, funnel, and close). What I've found even more interesting is that there are many parallels between the ethics of both. While for doing things against someone's will it is obviously wrong (and a crime), there is a dark-gray zone of things that are not a crime, but still - are rarely done in good faith, and can hurt the other person. If something is a gray zone in one, very often the other tells if it is OK-ish to a--holish. And 'no' in business is the same. Yes, people can change mind. Yes, 'no' sometimes means "maybe... but if I said that, you would have assumed 'yes' and put me in a really uncomfortable situation". There are pushy salespeople that after "no" they act as if they heard yes. This strategy may work, especially on people who are less assertive, less confident, etc. But it is a dick move, so don't. A lot of classic PAU is based on these pushy tactics. They even call when the next day a girl regrets they have had sex "buyer's remorse". Yes, some people would react differently if they've heard more, or maybe need time to consider things, or would benefit from some encouragement. I am so grateful to all salespeople, and recruiters, who after hearing "no" respected that work. And treated me like a person, not a ripe bag of gold.
- anticsapp 7y ago
  Pre-dotcom bust there was this lady from The Daily Deal. She harassed the shit out of us with her perkiness. No way we would spend IBM's money on a new website. But she was a no means yes woman. I asked her for $50,000 of free inventory to test if it was as good as she said it was. Free is always best and it kicked ass. Then she gave birth to twins and named them Joe, my boss, and my name. That was a bridge too far. Daily Deal became a favorite of IBM's and they ended up investing millions in it for B2B marketing. Sometimes stalking works. But I don't recommend it.
  - tschwimmer 7y ago
    She named her kids after you?
joyj2nd 7y ago
"For example, with MissionU, I used the research phase to understand what the CEO needed and then created a 13-page PowerPoint deck with data analysis and recommendations on what they should do." Well, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I would not do this. In fact, if I were asked to do this, I would agree an ask 20k Okay for it? When I was a fresh PhD, some companies managed to extract an insane amount of free work from me.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
Good negotiating is a fact-finding mission. "No" is data that tells you something. "No, not this thing" is not the same as "Drop dead!" The email response he got wasn't even as ugly he framed it in this piece. They were clearly interested and telling him when he could potentially connect with them. Countering that with more information about his side of the equation -- that he was willing to take any role they had and his target date was the fall -- turned up more information and helped them reach agreement. Generally speaking, it's fine to treat no as specific to X and not interpret it as a blanket rejection. And most CEOs will not be coy about letting you know that their "no" means "Sorry, you are just not a good fit for our company." They usually didn't get to be CEO by being a milquetoast. That's not really comparable to trying to sort out how aggressively you should pursue some woman that you're probably taller than, stronger than and so forth. These are just not good points of comparison. I'm annoyed by the "no means maybe" thing. He tries to cover himself by saying that "in dating, no always means no." But I wish he just hadn't gone there. Too many people are already disrespectful pricks. They don't need any openings to help them justify their lousy behavior. Anyway, congrats and thanks for the write up. It's good info, even though I think it unnecessarily steps in it on that one detail. /2¢
tschwimmer 7y ago
I appreciate that this high touch approach worked for the author, but I think the most important thing to understand about cold outreach is that it simply won't work 99.9% of the time and plan accordingly. I did cold outreach for a startup I was working on many years ago. I wasn't even selling anything, just trying to do some research. I called and emailed dozens of people. Nobody responded. I then went and showed up in person at a dozen or so offices of people who I wanted to learn more about. The most polite among them told me they were too busy to talk and when I told them I could wait they asked me to leave. The worst slammed doors in my face and swore at me. I tried a number of different sweeteners. I offered our service for free for varying amounts of time. I even offered hundreds of dollars of cash up front just to speak for 30 minutes. On average I could barely finish one sentence of my pitch before people said no. The world can be a cruel and dangerous place, and people treat strangers accordingly. Even if your product is amazing or you're offering someone a holy grail, their perceived risk of you is almost always too high for them to trust you. To me, this suggests that the pray and spray approach is a better one: if I double my chances of success from .01% to .02% (and these numbers don't feel too far off) by doing 10 hours of investment per customer, then I'm much better off sending thousands of generic emails. I'd say the author's success in cold outreach was more luck than anything he specifically did. Just my 2c.

271 points by jger15 7y ago

This fell flat for me. "Researching needs" started out talking about understanding the need of your audience, which is correct... but then devolved into google-stalking them to learn their hobbies. And the rest of the piece sounded like Sales 101, not a new approach. Which also means that those of us who are bombarded by cold contacts from sales guys pretty much see all these actions for what they are - sales pitches. That doesn't mean we won't listen if you show us a product that solves a problem... but it does mean that "follow up after a few days" when we don't respond is not going to increase our desire to engage with you. Your fellow sales folk may commend you for being "scrappy" and persisting to close a deal, but those of us who you are trying to actually sell to are just as likely to mentally blacklist you as annoying.

KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
Stuff like this article isn't meant to be guaranteed success, just more successful than if not. For example if you don't do outreach you have no chance. So this improvement in success rates is worthwhile.
goatherders 7y ago
My company does cold outreach for tech businesses and well over 80% of the affirmative responses we get come after the initial touchpoint and we have "followed up after a few days."
- codingdave 7y ago
  How many cold outreaches never respond? That is the real question - not how many deals can you close from the people who respond, but how much more could you close if you had an approach with a 90%+ response rate?
tsomerville 7y ago
He is talking about how to get a job - not sell you something.
- codingdave 7y ago
  That does explain some of it... but was completely unclear because he literally said at the top, in bold, "it's a strategy with fundamental principles for any cold outreach."
- ghaff 7y ago
  Isn't getting a job at least in part about selling yourself?

scottfr 7y ago

This is a great point and also very applicable to sales generally. There's definitely a continuum between "hyper target / completely customized" and "spray and pray" and each person/company needs to find the right point on that continuum for themselves. My company actually just put out a blog post last week on this showing how to quickly create customized emails while still leveraging templates [0]. [0] https://blaze.today/blog/best_sales_cold_email_templates_and_snippets/ https://blaze.today/blog/best_sales_cold_email_templates_and...

_jal 7y ago
Spam like this earns an immediate "remove all email addresses from your lists @ourdomain.com and let me know that you are suppressing them from your future mailings", ccing your mail provider's abuse address. The second mail gets your domain blocked and I tell your provider they're on notice. Some of us still take spam seriously.
- goatherders 7y ago
  I recognize we start from different places on this, but unrequested email does not necessarily equal SPAM. We had a guy a few months ago who threatened all kinds of litigation and reporting etc. when we reached out cold. At the same time, one of his colleagues responded with interest and just before Christmas their company signed a 5-figure annual deal with our client to provide an endpoint security solution they needed for their managed services practice. Put another way, if I honest to God had a gold bar with your name on it and contacted you by email to say "when can we meet up so I can give you this gold bar" and you replied and we met up and I gave you your gold bar, you wouldn't view my message as SPAM at all because now you have a gold bar that is worth a bunch of money. Hey, free gold bar!@ But when it comes to cold outreach many people defer to "I didn't ask for this email....SPAM SPAM SPAM!" Sometimes what's being offered isn't a good fit, doesn't provide ROI, etc. But sometimes it turns out to be a gold bar. I don't think that a business reaching out and saying "You guys provide X, we have a solution that does Y and has helped other companies that provide X in a meaningful way" is remotely the same as a Nigerian Prince selling Viagra.

C4stor 7y ago

I wonder how significant it is in the US, but in France, securing an internship is hardly difficult. Interns tend to barely get paid (when they do) and a lot of companies have no problem letting them rot for half of the internship duration. You could probably get an internship almost anywhere if you're willing to do the most annoying crap half of the day, and nothing the rest of the time. So, I don't know how significant is "I got an internship through this method" to prove that a method is good (but then again, maybe in the US culture it's actually something significant !)

deleted 7y ago
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snazz 7y ago
Internships are very competitive at places like Google. At less prestigious companies, they're less likely to be paid well and are easier to get.
- C4stor 7y ago
  Ok, makes sense then ! In France, when I was a student, it was quite often a matter of "we take 10 interns but have only one full time position afterwards, so good luck to everyone !", so it was staying in the company that proved quite competitive.
_jal 7y ago
In most industries, internships are just another class differentiator. Tech is different, in that the best internships actually pay, but in other fields internships are one of the main entrypoints into a field. If you can't afford to live in, e.g., NYC and work for free, that door isn't open.
peterwoerner 7y ago
At my company , our goal is to hire 50% of our interns to full time work, that is, it is one of the main methods for recruiting entry level employees.
perl4ever 7y ago

mrfusion 7y ago

I’d like more help with step one. Just finding the contact information. I’ve tried connecting over linked in and never gotten a response.

goatherders 7y ago
There are hundreds of tools available for finding everything from email addresses to phone numbers to physical addresses for work. Apollo.io, Hunter.io, LeadIQ just to get you started. Most have some tier of "free" if you only need a handful of contacts per month.
- minkzilla 7y ago
  Who does one contact at random medium size or big sized company?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Please do not phone. Maybe that's not universal, but I basically don't pick up the phone if I don't recognize the caller--or at least think because of area code it may be someone I should answer. With my work number and never check messages case, I don't even have a physical phone attached to my line.
  - georgespencer 7y ago
    I am a grumpy git, but… Please also do not email. It feels like every week I'm removing my corporate contact information from some obnoxious website which sells my email address having not obtained my permission to store or process it. Presumably somewhere, long ago, there was a CEO or founder who responded positively to cold outreach from a Ukrainian outsource dev team or Indian QA company, but I find all cold outreach to be unwelcome. Making it more personal just means I have to type my "politeno" text shortcut instead of "gdprsmash". People celebrate and mythologise the 0.1% of cold outreach success stories and ignore the fact that 99.9% of it is irritating spam.
    - 7y ago

amirathi 7y ago

Great advice if you absolutely want that ONE job at this ONE company. If you are in that boat then it's probably worth it to spend ~10 hours creating something valuable to offer. Most people generally have a set of companies that are ideal for them in a tier'ed manner. In that case, more efficient way would be to choose ~5 companies, do a lot of homework about their business & write to key people at these places telling in ONE paragraph what you can do for their business. If it fails, choose next ~5 and so on. It falls somewhere in-between spending 10 hours of effort on 1 application & mass applying to 50 companies without any effort whatsoever. This is also how effective sales teams work.

whatshisface 7y ago
You get part of those 10 hours "for free" just from the basic due diligence that you should apply to determine if you want to work for the company/department/team in the first place.

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BlackCherry 7y ago

This blog post over complicates and mythologizes an extremely simple process. That is to not be embarrassed or ashamed to ask people you want something from what you can do to get it. Additionally, this is survivorship bias. His emails sounded very professionally immature and while this companies leadership may have found it endearing, I could easily see other groups of people finding it off putting. What this guys effort signaled to me is that he’s probably annoyingly overeager, but willing to basically do whatever I want him to do whenever and however long I want him to do it. In other words he’d be a good lackey. If you want to shamelessly signal that you’d be a decent lackey for an obscure to medium startup this may be decent advice. And this may not be a bad thing, I know Casey Neistat’s employee Jack Coyne did something similar and it opened up a lot of doors for him.

rsp1984 7y ago
The way I see it he was just very motivated to get the job / internship. I didn't find his emails "professionally immature" either. For sure I'd much rather invite / interview him as opposed to one of the 100s who just send their CV via email with not much else.
- BlackCherry 7y ago
  To clarify "professional immaturity" does not mean personally immature/childish. It means he comes across as extremely green, new to the professional world, etc.
notahacker 7y ago
I think it also depends what you're looking for. If you're applying for one of multiple already-existent temporary positions for inexperienced people enthusiastic about learning on the job, appearing to be desperately keen on working for that company specifically probably gives you the edge over many other candidates that might have slightly more impressive universities on their CV. Some fields like marketing might appreciate creative approaches to hacking their recruitment process too, though they'll be more interested in whether your powerpoints are actually good. If you're a mid-level software engineer trying to get a well-paid job at a company working on completely different technical problems to your skillset and not actively hiring, it's probably wasted effort.

hirako2000 7y ago

It's a non scalable outreach tactic. It's not a strategy. Yes it has a good chance to work, if you are willing to spend hours researching your target, hours producing free content for that target, and insisting until the target gives up and give you what you want.

reaperducer 7y ago
Why does everything have to "scale?" It's an SV-bubble cliché that's really getting tired.
ghaff 7y ago
>Yes it has a good chance to work So, in other words, it is a good strategy if you genuinely are very interested in working for that particular company. Sure, sending out hundreds of form emails is a different strategy. But I'm not sure it's a better one. Mind you, I'm not necessarily advocating, say, doing an unpaid internship in general--though that may be the price of admission in some industries. i.e. Spending multiple months for a shot at a position. But spending a day researching and preparing for an outreach to a company you think you'd really like to work for doesn't strike me as excessive.
Dockson 7y ago
It doesn't have to be scalable when it only has to work once.

dt3ft 7y ago

relevant: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/05/23/missionu-self-styled-alternative-higher-education-closes-after https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018...

danial 7y ago

Patrick, if you’re reading this, I enjoyed this article. It reminds me that if you spend a little bit more time researching your prospect, you are more likely to get positive results. Another lesson is that it helps to focus on a few prospects you really want to work with, rather than spray and pray. Thank you for sharing.

patrickrivera 7y ago
thanks, Danial! exactly. the strategy isn't the literal tactics I took (e.g., spending ten hours, reaching out to one company, etc.) the strategy is thinking about cold outreach as a sales process and adapting it to your situation.

minkzilla 7y ago

Who does one contact at a medium to large size company? Obviously contacting the CEO would not work.

yread 7y ago
Founders@ might work

petercooper 7y ago

I'm the person who gets these sorts of emails at my company, and just a few words in one of his emails really caught my attention! "Would love to work on this mission with you and the team" .. yeah, yeah, generic blah, everyone says that. "and I won't take it for granted." Ok, wow, I rarely have people make promises like that. It sounds genuine and even if it's not, it's a point I can pull someone up on later on if they're screwing around. Sending off some generic corporate speech will rarely work with me, but if someone acts a little more personably and shows they have some sort of emotional skin in the game, I'm all ears.

travisjungroth 7y ago
> if someone acts a little more personably and shows they have some sort of emotional skin in the game, I'm all ears. Which why generic corporate speech is just an arms race of faking that you have emotional skin in the game. Saying you'd "love to work on this mission with you and the team" was once enough. Now, you also have to say that you "won't take it for granted" to catch your attention. I wonder what the next step will be.
- chrismarlow9 7y ago
  > I wonder what the next step will be. https://youtu.be/JWdZEumNRmI https://youtu.be/JWdZEumNRmI ?
- petercooper 7y ago
  I guess. But if someone comes up with something new, that shows they recognize the banality of the corporate speech and came up with something new. Almost no-one actually bothers to do this (judging from years of banal, generic bizdev type emails I've received).

tom_mellior 7y ago

I think this post tries hard to claim something that wasn't quite the case. The author did not overcome a "no". They "overcame" a "sure, next summer might work". Which, given that they were a student, was really a "sure, whenever you are free might work"; the company assumed that they would be studying during the fall. So what remains is that in the initial mail, the author presumably failed to mention that they would be free already in the fall. If they had, it looks like the company would have happily interviewed them for their fall internship program. So my reading is that there really was no "no" at all to overcome, just some unfortunate initial communication. Including the fact that the company created the impression that they "weren't hiring", while in fact they were.

mkchoi212 7y ago

A lot of people may think this blog post is either over complicating stuff or stating the obvious. While slightly true, you'd be surprised at how many people miss the points highlighted by the author. I get so many cold emails that don't hit any of these points and I just end up deleting them immediately.

PedroCandeias 7y ago

I'm seeing some negative comments that focus on the article specifics. So I thought I'd say well done Patrick for reaching your goal using creativity and the right kind of persistence. Thank you for showing the actual steps you took and sharing your thought process. I've been in software almost 20 years and due to some incredibly poor timing am in need of finding my own door of opportunity, so I found your post inspirational. Thank you.

patrickrivera 7y ago
thanks, Pedro! yep. you can adapt the idea of research, add value, and handle objections into whatever permutation works best for your situation. that's the strategy part. best of luck, you can do it :)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
steve76 7y ago
Bring back guesting on the record. Should start from the top. Life is fun. People are naturally happy. If it's not right or fun, don't do it.

MomchilIvanovK 7y ago

The article provides good value. But it would be better if the guy (Patrick) also included the script he used to reach out. 1. Research is important - no doubt about it. Without knowing your prospects, you can't do anything to persuade them. 2. Offer value - is also true. 3. Overcome obstacles - also true! But I'll add one more - baby steps. Baby steps means that you shouldn't ask to hire you in your first cold email. It feels like a lot of work to do and CEOs typically don't have the time. Instead propose them a time when you can chat more about it so the CEO can see if you are a good fit, etc.

patrickrivera 7y ago
Patrick here. Agreed. In the initial outreach I gave some context and asked to meet for coffee. Here it is: "Hi Adam, My name is Patrick Rivera and we have not met, but since hearing about MissionU on the Rich Roll podcast I've been thinking about how MissionU has the opportunity to improve the future of education. I've spent the last two years trying to get an internship in management consulting but was repeatedly told I didn't have a chance because I don't go to a target school. Although I eventually succeeded, I realized there are millions of people today that don't have pedigree, but do have potential. I think MissionU would be a grreat fit for me because I'm interested in empowering these people to develop skills needed to maximize their potential Additionally, I heard you say on Lewis Howes' podcast that one of MissionU's challenges is identifying cities to expand into. I've attached some recommendations based on my research. Would love to connect over coffee to discuss what you're working on at MissionU and see if there's any way I can help as I'll be in SF until Thanksgiving. Thanks in advance for your time!"

reese_john 7y ago

Derek Sivers has proposed a similar strategy: https://sivers.org/gethired https://sivers.org/gethired

arturm 7y ago

Most jobs come from referral. Scalable cold outreach strategy is key to getting a job in tech these days. Does anyone still apply online?

Etheryte 7y ago
How do you suppose referral works when you don't have any contact with the company you're eyeing? I've applied for every job I've had online, save for the first one. It can be a messy process, but if you bring real value, you get noticed fairly quickly.
joejerryronnie 7y ago
About half the positions I staff are from referrals and half are from randomly submitted online resumes. The quality of team members have ended up being roughly equivalent.
ghaff 7y ago
I'm not sure how those two statements go together. Do a lot of people really refer individuals they don't know at all outside of a cold outreach just for a shot at a referral bonus? All three jobs I've gotten in the last 20 years have come through people I know. (One was a referral; the other two were getting hired by someone I knew.) But these were people I actually did know and had worked with in some manner.

scapecast 7y ago

I wonder if the people that are condescending about Patrick's effort have ever done cold outbound prospecting and sold anything in their lives. But who am I to make assumptions... Patrick, great job for: 1) trying something different and being persistent and polite, but not annoying 2) reaching your objective, and 2) documenting it in a post. You've got the result on your side, and you found one possible way to get there. Are there others? Sure! Get an intro via a mutual connection, etc. You chose the one that worked for you given your constraints / circumstances. When I saw your slide, my immediate reaction was "he must have been at Accenture". Looks like the templates haven't changed since I left in 2013 :-)

Macha 7y ago
> I wonder if the people that are condescending about Patrick's effort have ever done cold outbound prospecting and sold anything in their lives. But who am I to make assumptions... I'm sure cold outbound prospecting is very hard and has a non-zero success rate. The fact that it might be hard for the person doing it doesn't mean it's not an unwelcome intrusion for the rest of us.

IMTDb 7y ago

> In dating, "no" always means "no". But in sales and recruiting, “no” doesn’t always mean “no”. What does say "no" in sales and recruiting ?

plastodon1 7y ago
> The price of the car is $2000, are you interested? > No > The price of the car is $500, are you interested now? > Yes
- downerending 7y ago
  > I make $50K per year, are you interested in going out? > No > New job. Now I make $5M per year, are you interested now? > Yes :-)
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I looked at a used car at a new car dealer a year or two ago, and when I didn't follow up, they didn't just call me back, but they started calling two, three times a day, practically every day. They literally wouldn't give up until I answered the phone, even though I didn't want to talk to them because I was freaked out at how much they were calling. They didn't however, offer to sell it for $500. And I'm never, ever, buying a car from that dealer. In 50 years I will remember that, even if there was one bad apple salesman or one stupid boss who forced him to do it. So I think it's too glib to say dating and sales are different. Ghosting and people who won't take no for an answer are upsetting things that happen in both settings. People do both because they perceive it's in their interests.
- IMTDb 7y ago
  > The price of the car is $2000, are you interested? > No > The price of the car is $500, are you interested now? > No > When will you be interested by a new car ? > Never > Can I call you back in 3 month ? > No * 3 month later * > The price of the car is $2000, are you interested? > No ...
golemiprague 7y ago
No certainly doesn't mean no in dating, I am not sure why this guy is saying it, maybe lack of experience.

tagami 7y ago

^ old sales guy. "no" means "know". They need to know more about the FABs (feature advantage benefit) you are offering to solve their problem.

deepspace 7y ago

FTA: " Following up is so crucial that enterprise sales teams have software to automate follow ups." As someone on the receiving end of sales solicitations, a lack of follow-up is the most frustrating thing imaginable, and I don't believe that it is a solved problem right now. I suspect that some widely used enterprise sales software (maybe Salesforce?) recently developed a bug that messes badly with the follow up process. I have recently seen many interesting and perfectly targeted outreach messages in my inbox, for products that I am genuinely interested in. So far, so good - something is obviously going right. But then I reply to the message, and instead of the sender following up with me, I start getting multiple copies of the first message delivered from random people at the same company. Replying to these messages only increases the flood of solicitation messages, until I have to resort to blacklisting the entire company domain. What a waste of my time, and what a lost opportunity for the companies running the flawed software.

dvasdekis 7y ago
A friend works at BeeCastle (https://beecastle.com/ https://beecastle.com/) which aims to address this exact niche. Systemic but carefully curated sales approaches. Free trial available.

hellofunk 7y ago

If I told you I had an outreach strategy with a perfect record that could be made available to you, is that something you might be interested in?

stared 7y ago

> But in sales and recruiting, “no” doesn’t always mean “no”. Where I should start? I dived too deep into dating - partly because I was in the process of writing "Dating for Nerds", and partly because my ex-girlfriend was a sexologist/sociologist (who at that time was writing her master's thesis "Market Metaphors in Dating"). There are many sales metaphors for dating, especially in PUA lingo (including all about the target, pitch, funnel, and close). What I've found even more interesting is that there are many parallels between the ethics of both. While for doing things against someone's will it is obviously wrong (and a crime), there is a dark-gray zone of things that are not a crime, but still - are rarely done in good faith, and can hurt the other person. If something is a gray zone in one, very often the other tells if it is OK-ish to a--holish. And 'no' in business is the same. Yes, people can change mind. Yes, 'no' sometimes means "maybe... but if I said that, you would have assumed 'yes' and put me in a really uncomfortable situation". There are pushy salespeople that after "no" they act as if they heard yes. This strategy may work, especially on people who are less assertive, less confident, etc. But it is a dick move, so don't. A lot of classic PAU is based on these pushy tactics. They even call when the next day a girl regrets they have had sex "buyer's remorse". Yes, some people would react differently if they've heard more, or maybe need time to consider things, or would benefit from some encouragement. I am so grateful to all salespeople, and recruiters, who after hearing "no" respected that work. And treated me like a person, not a ripe bag of gold.

anticsapp 7y ago
Pre-dotcom bust there was this lady from The Daily Deal. She harassed the shit out of us with her perkiness. No way we would spend IBM's money on a new website. But she was a no means yes woman. I asked her for $50,000 of free inventory to test if it was as good as she said it was. Free is always best and it kicked ass. Then she gave birth to twins and named them Joe, my boss, and my name. That was a bridge too far. Daily Deal became a favorite of IBM's and they ended up investing millions in it for B2B marketing. Sometimes stalking works. But I don't recommend it.
- tschwimmer 7y ago
  She named her kids after you?

joyj2nd 7y ago

"For example, with MissionU, I used the research phase to understand what the CEO needed and then created a 13-page PowerPoint deck with data analysis and recommendations on what they should do." Well, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I would not do this. In fact, if I were asked to do this, I would agree an ask 20k Okay for it? When I was a fresh PhD, some companies managed to extract an insane amount of free work from me.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

Good negotiating is a fact-finding mission. "No" is data that tells you something. "No, not this thing" is not the same as "Drop dead!" The email response he got wasn't even as ugly he framed it in this piece. They were clearly interested and telling him when he could potentially connect with them. Countering that with more information about his side of the equation -- that he was willing to take any role they had and his target date was the fall -- turned up more information and helped them reach agreement. Generally speaking, it's fine to treat no as specific to X and not interpret it as a blanket rejection. And most CEOs will not be coy about letting you know that their "no" means "Sorry, you are just not a good fit for our company." They usually didn't get to be CEO by being a milquetoast. That's not really comparable to trying to sort out how aggressively you should pursue some woman that you're probably taller than, stronger than and so forth. These are just not good points of comparison. I'm annoyed by the "no means maybe" thing. He tries to cover himself by saying that "in dating, no always means no." But I wish he just hadn't gone there. Too many people are already disrespectful pricks. They don't need any openings to help them justify their lousy behavior. Anyway, congrats and thanks for the write up. It's good info, even though I think it unnecessarily steps in it on that one detail. /2¢

tschwimmer 7y ago

I appreciate that this high touch approach worked for the author, but I think the most important thing to understand about cold outreach is that it simply won't work 99.9% of the time and plan accordingly. I did cold outreach for a startup I was working on many years ago. I wasn't even selling anything, just trying to do some research. I called and emailed dozens of people. Nobody responded. I then went and showed up in person at a dozen or so offices of people who I wanted to learn more about. The most polite among them told me they were too busy to talk and when I told them I could wait they asked me to leave. The worst slammed doors in my face and swore at me. I tried a number of different sweeteners. I offered our service for free for varying amounts of time. I even offered hundreds of dollars of cash up front just to speak for 30 minutes. On average I could barely finish one sentence of my pitch before people said no. The world can be a cruel and dangerous place, and people treat strangers accordingly. Even if your product is amazing or you're offering someone a holy grail, their perceived risk of you is almost always too high for them to trust you. To me, this suggests that the pray and spray approach is a better one: if I double my chances of success from .01% to .02% (and these numbers don't feel too far off) by doing 10 hours of investment per customer, then I'm much better off sending thousands of generic emails. I'd say the author's success in cold outreach was more luck than anything he specifically did. Just my 2c.