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A cold outreach strategy that works

patrickrivera.co

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Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#71

Post by _jal »

hash872 wrote: post #63
_jal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Like I said upstream, I am talking about spam. If you want to make shit up and attack that instead, I don't have to be involved, so I'm done with this.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#72

Post by hash872 »

georgespencer wrote: post #70
hash872 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

How do they generate business then, if not cold outreach? I don't mean it as a gotcha, I'm genuinely curious. I suppose you could say inbound leads, but I don't really believe that's a significant % of revenue, and anyways HN seems to hate marketing.

The gun analogy doesn't really work man, having salespeople isn't really predicated on what other companies are doing or not doing

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#73

Post by scapecast »

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 :-)

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#74

Post by _jal »

tener wrote: post #58
_jal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-zero portion of just about anything includes something of meaningful value to someone. This does not mean that sifting through it will yield value considering opportunity cost. Given the volume of spam I get from would-be vendors, there probably has been something I could have used somewhere in there. Similarly, I've probably walked past storm drains with valuables in them. I don't dig in there either. If some…

Huh, why do you bother with replying at all? Wouldn't silent ban be quicker and therefore cheaper for you?

Ignoring spam does not make it go away.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#75

Post by BlackCherry »

whack wrote: post #59
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…

> 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. This is unnecessarily condescending. When having to choose from a crowded field of seemingly-competent candidates, it's natural to want someone who is passionate and willing to go the extra mile. And as someone who is genuinely passionate to work in a certain industry or to work for…

While it's true that lackey is condescending, it's also accurate. We have euphemized "lackey" with less condescending terms like "gopher" or even phrases like "you'll do what it takes". He clearly signaled in his follow up email that he was willing to do "what it takes" to "get in" with the company: "Does the team need an office manager, receptionist, coffee runner, etc."

His telegraphed servility is exactly in line with the very definition you posted.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#76

Post by ghaff »

hash872 wrote: post #63
_jal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In many cases "sales people" (at least outside sales people) are not cold calling. They're getting qualified leads from digital marketing campaigns.

However, your basic point stands. I get that some people don't want cold outreach through any channel, ads, etc. While there may be some companies that can organically grow through maybe a combination of organic search, stories being written about them (at which point someone here will dutifully post a link about submarine PR), word of mouth, etc. I'd respectfully suggest that most companies that try to do so will be out of business in a very short period of time.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#77

Post by goatherders »

georgespencer wrote: post #69
ghaff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 outre…

Your %'s are off by a startling amount.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#78

Post by ghaff »

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?

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.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#79

Post by troydavis »

hash872 wrote: post #72
georgespencer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 comp…

How do they generate business then, if not cold outreach? I don't mean it as a gotcha, I'm genuinely curious. I suppose you could say inbound leads, but I don't really believe that's a significant % of revenue, and anyways HN seems to hate marketing. The gun analogy doesn't really work man, having salespeople isn't really predicated on what other companies are doing or not doing

> How do they generate business then, if not cold outreach?

There are tons of ways to get warm interest, whether that's permission to email, a conversation with a salesperson, or a request for more info. Some obvious examples are content marketing (with a way to provide your email for a mailing list and/or account), trial downloads, product tours/webinar registrations, trade show booths, and user group sponsorships.

Literally any interaction except emailing a complete stranger can, and often does, lead to someone giving a salesperson or a company permission to contact them.

(Related: Needing to guess who needs a product, email them out of the blue, and be wrong 50-99% of the time, is often a sign that the company is failing at marketing. Generating warm leads is not hard.)

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#80

Post by wpietri »

goatherders wrote: post #26
_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.

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 nee…

They are not the same, but if they're sent in bulk, they are both spam.

The essence of spam is using automation to use the same amount of your time to waste more of other people's time. Door-to-door sales is awful, but at the very least the waste of time is symmetrical. Computers, though, let spammers waste ever more of their targets' time on their quest to get rich.

Having talked to many spammers on the phone back in the day, excuses like yours are common. "I'm an exception! What I'm doing is special and valuable!" Sure, bud. We're all special snowflakes. But you don't really believe it's all that valuable, or you'd trust that people with a need would seek you out. Your actual goal is to manipulate people such that money goes into your pocket instead of somebody else's. Which I get, in that there are plenty of other people doing the same thing. It's an arms race, and not playing guarantees you don't win. But let's not pretend that your spam is somehow not spam.

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