A cold outreach strategy that works • Hacker News Board

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#131

Post by JoshuaDavid » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

goatherders wrote: post #129

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP but a couple examples: An informative blog post which solves or helps with a problem I am experience, and plugs your service at the end. A more direct approach of an offer of something of value in exchange for my time (e.g. pay $$ to beta test this for a week). In general, the more the method of getting my attention requires a non-fakeable demonstration of value, the more likely I am to pay attention to it…

I actually thought long ago of a platform that gave vendors a place to pay people to demo software. Like "$10 gift card for 15 minutes of your time." Problem is that most companies strictly prohibit their workers receiving outside compensation. Many companies would gladly pay prospects to engage.

In the case of a larger business, the content-marketing approach (or really any other approach that generates warm leads for your sales team) is probably a better way to approach things. I know that my company uses something on the order of 20 SAAS products, all of which we found by looking for a solution to a specific problem we were facing and either running across the product directly, across a post by that company explaining how to solve the problem and plugging their product for similar problems, or getting a recommendation by an internal dev who had used the product before or a third party that did not stand to significantly gain by us using that product. That last channel is actually the largest, but not really actionable for you as a sales person.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#132

Post by Silhouette » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

goatherders wrote: post #130

Silhouette wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not connected to anyone else commenting here, just chiming in with another data point for you. does this mean that as a policy you won't engage with cold outreach regardless of what is being offered? How will we know what is being offered if we don't read the message or accept the call? Unless we've had prior contact with someone or they make contact through a trusted third party, we normally won't, we'll just bl…

Fair points all. But what if you dont know what you are looking for? What if you dont know that the way you are doing things now can be done significantly faster, better, or with less cost? I used to work for a large managed WordPress provider in their early days. The vast majority of people we talked to said "I had no idea this was available. For $x dollars you are saving me Y hours of time each month, Y hours that…

But what if you dont know what you are looking for? What if you dont know that the way you are doing things now can be done significantly faster, better, or with less cost?

That's a possibility that we accept, but the simple truth is that we're OK with it. We keep an eye on our industry and we have a decent professional network. We think the odds of something that really could revolutionize our business going unnoticed for long are slim.

This philosophy isn't just about emails or calls. We're similarly allergic to other time-wasters, such as websites full of vacuous waffle and nothing but "call us" for pricing. If we're actively looking for something but a potential supplier doesn't have easy ways to contact them and transparent terms and pricing, most of the time we're just going to move on without giving them a second thought.

Again, we accept that we might miss out on a genuinely valuable opportunity, but we're OK with not finding that one if it means we also don't get tied up in spammy enterprise sales engines for the rest. I operate mostly in the world of SMEs, where time is precious and the business's finances often have a direct effect on its people. If someone wants our business and has a useful product or service, the best thing they can do is be findable when we look for something like that and then be easy to work with.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#133

Post by wpietri » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

ta999999171 wrote: post #121

wpietri wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were behaving like an utter jackass, you would certainly know it. If you can't deal with somebody talking honestly about what you're publicly admitting to doing, I can't help you with that. Spam's spam. You contempt for the people you spam is blatant. And you're quite clear about your motivation, which is pecuniary. You're only upset because you're not honest with yourself about it, like the people who eat meat…

If there are a majority of my target niche companies that literally don't know my type of software exists, and it could help them, but having physical door to door salespeople would make the software more expensive than they'd be able to pay, what approach do you recommend?

For you? I'd say do whatever you think best. It's an imperfect world we're all trying to survive in. I mean, as ominvores, we only survive through the destruction of other life, which is kinda horrific. But it's not like there are great alternative choices. Meat is murder, but I'm still having ribs for dinner.

As I said, I don't think door-to-door sales is good either; it's just that the time cost is symmetric, so it's less abuseable. But it's still bothering people to get paid.

In a better world, people would find out what they need to know without manipulation. And that better world is partly here. If I know I need to buy a thing, I'll look at things like Wirecutter and Consumer Reports to get unbiased evaluations of things. If I know I have a problem but don't know a solution, I'll search, I'll read up, I'll consult forums like this one. And of course I read broadly so I can become aware of problems I don't realize I have yet.

But it's only partly here. So if that's not enough for you, well, do what you have to. My issue here isn't with people doing what it takes to get by. It's with people insisting we all pretend that there are no moral compromises involved.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#134

Post by tener » Fri, Apr 03, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #74

tener wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It kind of does: you don't want it to arrive in your inbox. It is implementation detail how you arrive at that effect. Personally I find adding a silent filter to be superior option in most aspects: it is quicker and foolproof. Surely it won't "educate" the sender, but TBH I don't think your current method is doing so anyway.

Re: A cold outreach strategy that works

#135

Post by anticsapp » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 10:36 AM UTC

tschwimmer wrote: post #122

anticsapp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

She named her kids after you?

Sorry, just seeing this now. She really did. But she was super Irish Catholic and I think she wanted the names Joe and Mike anyway. Also she was an early Bloomberg employee and had crazy stories about him.