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A cold outreach strategy that works

patrickrivera.co

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Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#61

Post by patrickrivera »

MomchilIvanovK wrote: post #57

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…

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!"

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#62

Post by whatshisface »

amirathi wrote: post #11

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 tell…

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.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#63

Post by hash872 »

_jal wrote: post #54
hash872 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose that the salespeople, without whom your employer or employers would go bankrupt, reach out to new prospects? How would that work? Am genuinely curious. By definition it seems to involve cold outreach of some type

I don't manage sales people; telling them how to do their job isn't my job. I can suggest that if the lack of a single communications channel would be crippling for you, you're already in a pretty precarious place and should maybe think about that. As for what you appear to believe is your gotcha, we don't have sales people, because our business doesn't work that way. I have worked for firms that did, though, and str…

You seem to define all cold outreach whatsoever as 'spam', so of course you can choose to fit anything into that category. If people contacted you cold via other communications channels, it seems like you would define that as spam as well.

Seeing as you don't manage sales people, I would gently suggest that at your old firms they were reaching out to people, cold, one way or another. That's literally what the job is

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#66

Post by Etheryte »

arturm wrote: post #65

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

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.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#67

Post by Ayraa »

BlackCherry wrote: post #17

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 e…

Agree the post over-complicates this.

Also, the message and approach should be very different depending on who you're reaching out to and for what reason (example: getting a job versus getting a client).

Providing value is important, but the goal of the first email is simply to get someone to reply, not overload them with info upfront (like what was suggested as one of the examples, a 13-page PowerPoint deck with data analysis).

I find providing 1-2 specific concrete ideas related to your product, service or ask and tailored for your prospect's business is enough to get an interested reply. Some good templates for this here: https://artofemails.com/new-clients

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#68

Post by joejerryronnie »

arturm wrote: post #65

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

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.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#69

Post by georgespencer »

ghaff wrote: post #28
goatherders wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#70

Post by georgespencer »

hash872 wrote: post #41
_jal wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you know or have you ever in your professional career worked for a company that employed salespeople? Do you understand that they mostly do cold outreach to generate revenue? If all the salespeople were to disappear overnight from that present or past employer, what would happen to company revenue and how many people would lose their jobs?

> have you ever in your professional career worked for a company that employed salespeople?

Yes.

> Do you understand that they mostly do cold outreach to generate revenue?

No, they do not.

> If all the salespeople were to disappear overnight, what would happen to company revenue and how many people would lose their jobs?

The point you're illustrating is that in a world where some companies have sales people, all companies need to have sales people (although not for cold outreach). In the same way as "well some people have guns so I need to have a gun too" isn't a good argument against gun control, you are not making a good argument for cold outreach / salespeople.

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