Outreach. It's one of the more painful parts of sales but, done right, it floods your pipeline with that 30% of the market who aren't actively investigating a solution to their problem, but would take a call about it.
So, let's find out how to take out some of the sting, as Luigi is joined by Ricky Pearl, CEO at Pointer to explore the staples of a high-converting outreach strategy. Learn the six essential steps you need to follow in setting up outreach, how you can win in sales with any personality, and why you should never skip testing.
🔗 LINKS
Connect with Ricky on LinkedIn.
Connect with Luigi on LinkedIn.
Join the Sales IQ Community here.
Get the Mindset eBook here.
Check on your mail deliverability at MailTester, Mailgenius, or MailMeteor.
Learn to sell at your best in any buying environment. Explore the Create Pipeline course from Sales IQ Global here.
SUMMARY
How did Ricky Pearl get his start in the sales industry?
Ricky Pearl got his start in sales by using his experiences as a wayward kid to hone skills like persuasion and storytelling. He later developed his sales method into his business owner superpower after falling in love with it.
The fundamental concern is how the field of sales has altered in terms of the skill sets needed.
With a growing focus on data literacy, the capacity to translate data into insight and education, and the requirement for more advanced skills like the capacity to create effective emails, documents, and business cases, the field of sales has developed.
What is the procedure for carrying out a successful outreach strategy?
One sentence summary of the response: The process entails personalizing the message to make it relevant, choosing the appropriate channel, employing a scientific method to increase conversion by testing and fine-tuning the audience, message, and cadence, and ongoing campaign optimization.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: By the Sales IQ Network, this is the Sales IQ Podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi, and each week we'll be going on a journey that will inspire you, motivate you, and help you be the best sales professional you can be. Our focus will be on mindset, tactics, and the strategies that will enable you to create more pipeline, and win more deals.
Welcome to another episode of the sales IQ podcast. I'm excited. I'll tell you why I'm excited because it is the start of a new quarter. It's the start of a new month. And for many, it's also the start of a new financial year. Now I missed you last week. I missed you last week. I didn't put an episode out because I was down with the damn cover, the gift that keeps on giving, wipe me out.
I had every intention, but I just had no. I could not speak. And the guest that we had booked in for last week is joining us next week. So it is an incredible episode that we were gonna be recording, but I'm back. I'm feeling great. Actually, I actually went to the gym today. I was a bit tired, but I'll tell you what I was able to tick the box.
I'm feeling really good. But I'm also feeling really excited about the second half of 2022 and what the second half represents for many of us, right. In a world where if you do listen to the news, if you do watch the news, the first thing I can say is absolutely stop listening. Stop watching. I mean, I don't listen to it because I tell you what there's enough negative sentiment.
There's enough negative. Talk about, you know, the changing economy. Down to an economy, et cetera. And for me, I was sort of saying, Hey, no, economic climate is gonna stop me from achieving my goals. And for you as a sales professional, no economic climate is gonna stop you from achieving your goals. So before we get into today's episode, in today's episode, we're gonna talk about all things outreach in a declining economy.
If people are saying that economy is slowing down, this is where you need to be proactive. You need to really put in place your outreach strategy so that you can be proactive in generating more pipeline so that the economic climate doesn't impact your. Performance, but just check the show notes as well at the end of this episode, because I want you to check out the ebook, which is on mindset.
It's got some incredible strategies that'll help you really think about setting yourself up the foundation for success, setting yourself up so that you can have a massive 2022 end. The last six months is six months. It's actually, it's under six months. Now use this time. Download D ebook. It's got some great strategies. It's got a calculator. It'll help you build your sales plan so that you can really make 2022 an unforgettable year for the right reasons. Okay. So jump in there.
Also check out the Sales IQ Community. We've got incredible guests coming up. We've got the high performance ex high performance coach of the New York Yankees joining us this week, talking all things high performance.
It's available to you as a listener to the Sales IQ Podcast, as somebody who I care about because I'm here to help you be the best sales professionals. You can be, you have access to additional content. You've just gotta click the link. There is no payment to access. There is a free part of our community that I would love for you to come in, have a chat to us.
And there's. There's a whole range of content there's hours and hours. There's priceless amounts of content there to help you be the very best sales professional you can be.
[00:03:28] Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by the Create Pipeline program from Sales IQ Global. This program will equip you with the skills, tools, and confidence to run an outbound strategy so you can generate more qualified opportunities and close more deals. Hear what Ellis from DocuSign has been able to achieve since joining the program and our incredible community.
"So, my name's Ellis, I work at DocuSign as an ABR. And the reason I started Sales IQ was because I really needed that guidance and that training to make sure that the outreach that I was doing was hitting the nail on the head. So I was lucky enough to start the program early on in this role and since then I've been pretty successful and last quarter I finished on a 185%. So I've seen some huge results by adopting the principles."
Our next cohort is starting soon. So to learn more, go to www.salesiqglobal.com, or if you have a team of sellers, talk to us about our in-house offering. Control your pipeline, control your destiny, with Sales IQ.
[00:04:33] Luigi Prestinenzi: I've had enough rambling. You're probably going Luigi, I know it. I hear it. Okay. Tell me a bit about this week. So this week we have Ricky, we have Ricky Pearl as our guest. Now, Ricky runs, he's gonna tell you a bit about himself, but he runs a business that helps companies generate. Pipeline, right. That's what he does.
He does it. That's his, that's what his company does. So I thought, you know what? I was talking to Ricky recently, I thought, Ricky, come on the show. Let's talk about let's show. You know, let's talk about your proven process, the strategies that you implement that help you generate pipeline, not just for you, but for your clients, for companies that pay you.
To do pipeline generation activities for them. So this is gonna be a great episode. Rick is gonna step out the process that he goes through when setting up an effective campaign. So there's a lot of positive takeaways and as always guys. Please would love a rating would love alike. Would love a review on the podcast player you listen to because the more positive feedback we get from you, the more people we can influence in a positive way.
And if you're a longtime listener, I just wanna say, thank you. You know, how grateful I am for coming on for hearing the content that I put together for engaging with the content that I, I put together, because I put this content to help you. And if you are new to our show, thank you for joining. I'm excited that you've joined us.
And I hope you find this episode valuable because I put this content together to help you be the very best sales professional. You can be
Welcome to the show. Ricky, thank you for having me, man, pretty pumped and actually just for our listeners who might not be watching this right now. And one of the things that you'll learn about Ricky, when I, when I push you to his LinkedIn profile is some of the content that he shares. He shares content, talking about topics around outbound and a whole variety of different sales topics walking on his treadmill.
And Ricky is actually walking on his treadmill now. So for Ricky, I am proud to say you are the first guest that have joined us on the Sales IQ Podcast, walking and talking mate.
So welcome to the Sales IQ Podcast.
[00:06:38] Ricky Pearl: Thank you. So it's a great walkin talk, right? Have interesting conversations and try and get healthy at the same time. I've got a multitask here.
[00:06:46] Luigi Prestinenzi: Got a multitask. That's right. Especially if you know, we're in sales man and we're working long, long hours and we're, we're doing what's needed to get the job done. But mate, I wanna say thanks for jumping on, but before we get into today's topic and talk all things outbound and how we turn on an outbound strategy so that we can create more pipeline for ourselves. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about how you started in the wacky world of selling.
[00:07:05] Ricky Pearl: I think sales really. It started with me developing the sales attributes, like being a salesperson. And, and it, it really, I think is one of those origin stories. Like I was super naughty as a kid and I'm doing like, you know, very, very young, very early days getting into things I shouldn't do.
And I think I learned how to convince people how to convey a story, how to get outta trouble. Yeah. I think that was really the first thing I started selling and. Yeah, that's that kind of taught me the attributes. It wasn't the, it, wasn't what I loved though. That's the tactics. I love the strategy of it.
And when I started my own businesses, I realized the product part is actually pretty easy. You can have a good product now, what, and as a business owner, most of the time I spent selling. Yeah. But that's, that's what you have to do as a founder, as a business owner, you're either selling the vision, you're selling the mission or you're selling the product.
Mm. And. Really that just, you know, developed into me falling in love with sales, sales processes and developing that as my superpower.
[00:08:07] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Awesome, man. And do you mind me asking you talk about those attributes? What are the attributes that you define that make up a sales professional?
[00:08:15] Ricky Pearl: Just, yeah, it it's a tough one and I can give you all of those standard wonky terms of like empathy, you know, resilience, but you know, There's a mix and I don't think there's any one, two or three.
Yeah. You know, I think some of it is like resilience is definitely one of it, but strong mental fortitude, emotional maturity. Mm. By knowing where your weaknesses are. And being able to compensate. Yeah. Knowing where your strengths are and being able to play to them. Like, I think those are things that are really underrated.
Yeah. You could be shy. You could be quiet, you could be introverted, you could be extroverted, you could be dry or or you could have like a very flamboyant sense of humor. Like all of those can work. Mm. If you know how to use your attributes.
[00:08:59] Luigi Prestinenzi: And I think you're interested, but, but I think what you said, like, I really like that I've never actually had that sort of conversation with anyone, a response, but.
I think understanding your strengths and weaknesses, I think is a, is a really, really important is an important point you make for sales professionals because you're right. The extrovert introvert one isn't better than the other. I know, early in my career, it was the extrovert, the flamboyant, the outgoing personality was what a lot of people looked for. Right.
[00:09:28] Ricky Pearl: Yeah. And that's like your classic sales person, like on the floor. Yeah. You know, like you're in retail, you're talking to a hundred people, a. Like maybe, maybe better to be extroverted there, but as soon as you're beyond that.
[00:09:38] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. But I think, I think the reality though, as we've, as we've, as the profession has evolved yeah. Data literacy research, like when we think about some of these key attributes, these weren't things that people looked for 20 years ago, it wasn't something data literate or what is my sales team need to be data literate. But today data understanding data, being able to look through data, being able to Turn data into insight and education is absolutely fundamental.
[00:10:05] Ricky Pearl: It is a very different ball game. The skill sets you need to be a successful sales professional these days. You know, I mean out like talking about outbound specifically, you know, you come to the sales world and all of a sudden you're looking at like the technicals of email configuration and server configurations, so that that email can even be delivered.
Yeah. You know, things have generally shifted. It used to be. That loose lip, fast tongue kind of salesperson who could talk you into a pedal, but now it's how sophisticated is your writing? You know, can you construct a good, a good email? Can you, can you put together a good document, a good briefing. You know, how well can you articulate someone's problem?
In a business case, in a well structured business case, like there's a lot more sophisticated. Yeah. And the skill sets required have completely shifted.
[00:10:53] Luigi Prestinenzi: So this is awesome, man. And I think I think we're gonna have a really lot of fun. And in, in the time that we've got today, Ricky, and I've been, been pumped to be able to, to share some of your concepts with my listeners, but I just wanna talk a bit about why my listeners should really think about your point of view. So at, at, at the moment you run Pointer, Yeah. Can you tell me, or can you tell us exactly what pointer do? Because I think that'll bring to life exactly why sure. I've brought you on to talk about outreach.
[00:11:20] Ricky Pearl: So, I mean, Pointer has this great, like this origin story of really trying to help people. Yeah. It used to be good enough that you could be the best mechanic in an area and your workshop would be.
Right. You just have to be good at doing something or have a good product. Yeah. Nowadays, if you don't understand, you know, how to advertise on meta and on TikTok and how to do all of these other sophisticated sales and marketing motions, your business might fail. Yeah. And so I wanted to help businesses thrive.
Right. I understood how to do sales. I understand how to do outbound, how to start conversations, particularly that top of funnel, those early stages within a business. and I thought if I could help people overcome those barriers and help them thrive, then I can thrive too. And this could be like a win-win situation for everyone.
I get to do what I'm passionate about and help people fulfill their dreams. Yeah. Which is incredible. So we started pointer it's focused on that top of funnel that outsourced business development, outsource sales development rep kind of a role where we are doing the real dirty work that grind.
Most people don't want to do. Yeah. They're cold emails, cold calling cold outbound in general, starting conversations with people who could use our customer's products.
[00:12:39] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yep. Okay. So I hope that brings for all my listeners man. I hope that kind of shares exactly why we've got you on, right. Because that's your business. You people outsource. The business development function to you so that you can create top of funnel pipeline for them. Yeah.
[00:12:56] Ricky Pearl: And, and now we've seen this across every industry, every, from service of like small to medium businesses within healthcare, through to massive SAAS you know, tech startups in every industry.
So like we really understand now and have developed this expertise around. how to, how to build that function well.
[00:13:14] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. All right. So this is good, right? So I want to, now I wanna take two scenarios. The first scenario is yeah, because you're working across different, different sectors and you're applying your own methodology.
The scenario I want us to, to walk through is a campaign that you might have recently executed or recently run for a client. Yeah. That delivered results. Can you walk us through. Your process, your playbook, you know what you did to get, to get use outreach as a mechanism to drive more pipeline. Sure. Where did you start?
[00:13:47] Ricky Pearl: I I'll start off by saying there's no magic. Yeah. In, in, in business development. Right. That's, that's what everyone's looking for. They're looking for some, some pill that they can take that takes the pain of outbound away. Yeah. And it just doesn't exist. Right? Like there's a human problem to outbound, which is that we don't like rejection and there's a lot of deep psychological concern.
Like. Challenges there there's also a massive technological issue now that you could be fine with all of that, but if you can't get an inbox, get your email to land in an inbox. It's like, you know, I don't know. What's what peer rating you have on this podcast. So, but it's like pissing into the wind, right?
Like you just, you you're getting nowhere. So we when we set up a campaign, we we've got a standard methodology, a very simple playbook. who do you want to talk to? Who, who has a problem that you can solve? Yeah. And we spend a lot of time on that because if you get that right, you know, like if you come and say, Hey, Ricky, do you need a home loan?
and I don't need a home loan. You could, you could talk to billion Ricks who don't need home loans, and you're just spinning your wheels, getting nowhere. Or you could talk to me when I've just bought a piece of land and I'm considering building mm. You know, and saying, Hey, I assume you're gonna be building soon.
You know, what are your finances? Like? Do you need help? All of a sudden you're in a conversation, right? So if you find the right person at the right time, everything else is easier. So we always gotta start with that. Who do we want to be talking to? Whose problems are we solving? And the more detailed, the more nuanced, the deeper we go there, the more successful the campaign is always.
Yeah, right now we've gotta say, right. These are people wanna talk to, what are we gonna be saying to them? Like, what's the message now, obviously there's technical issue. There's a lot of challenges in that list built. Now there's the messaging, a marketing issue. What are we gonna say? Most founders come to us, they wanna talk about the product.
And so we have to start them off saying, nobody wants to talk about you. They wanna talk about themselves. So let's yeah, let's flip this. Let's talk about the problem that you're solving. Like, Hey Ricky, I assume you're gonna be building, you know, this is gonna be the biggest expense in your life over the next 30 years.
Yeah. If we could, if we could help take some of that pressure off you by getting you better rates, would that be interest? I like, that's interesting to me. I don't know what your interest rate is. I don't even know what the product is yet. You're just saying, Hey, if I can make this less stressful for you, would you be interested?
So that messaging is super important. And once you have that messaging, it's like, well, how we gonna have this conversation? Is it over email? Yeah. Is it over LinkedIn? Is it over a phone call? But you've got various channels to have the conversation.
[00:16:24] Luigi Prestinenzi: No, I just wanna go back. This is actually really good. Right? So I'm, I'm wondering, I'm gonna break this down. I'm gonna break this down step by step. So the first step that you are you're talking about is really understand, defining your target market first, really giving consideration to the target market and who within that market that we want to be talking to and why. Right.
[00:16:42] Ricky Pearl: And build up from there.
[00:16:44] Luigi Prestinenzi: Then the second step is all about understanding message. So problem V product. So instead of going out with a product and saying, this is what we do. Let's actually focus on the problem that you help people solve. And the fourth step is all around your channel assessment, which channel are you gonna be using and leveraging to engage with your target market?
Yeah. So I'm, I'm liking how, you know, you're stepping this out, but I just wanna go back a step because I think something that you said earlier on when we were speaking about that data literate sales, professional, yeah. You spoke about. Email structuring server structuring. And I, I see this a lot like yourself companies not setting themselves up to actually get their emails to deliver.
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Can you just talk us through the, the step zero? Let's call it step zero, right? Yeah. What do we need to do to set our systems up? To ensure the emails that we do finally pressed when we press send, get through to the other person.
[00:17:50] Ricky Pearl: This is just something everyone's getting wrong. Here's the concept, spam phishing emails.
Scams is like a multi multibillion dollar problem in this world. So companies like Google and Microsoft are constantly trying to solve that problem and make their inboxes better experiences. Yeah. So how do essentially they are on a war against unsolicited. Yeah, right. There's laws competing. There's, there's a whole lot of challenges there.
So this is an uphill battle and it's a, and it's a moving feast at the same time. So at the moment you have to be technically perfect to get emails delivered to the inbox. If it's going through the spam, you might as well not send it. If it's going to the promotions folder, like your, your success rate is, and your promotions folder is the new spam folder, right?
You have to be in the inbox. Yeah. And this is now a, a criteria of sales is get your emails into the impact. So you have to be looking at things like your, your technical service side, like your D C your SBF, your DMARC, these like very technical things that have to be configured, right? Yeah. In order for your emails to be delivered on top of that, you've got volume issues.
You've got language issues. So this isn't just a technologically problem. There's also how your people interact with those emails. Do they just bang out 50 in an. Yeah, right. Or do they, do they send a thousand, you know, like Gmail, technically the limit is 2000 emails a day. I can promise you now there's no inbox sending out two email, 2000 emails a day that are getting delivered.
So there's a people problem. And then there's a procedural problem. And like, how are companies structured to make sure that the emails that these new sales reps are sending ha don't have spam words in it. You know, like, they'll say like, Hey, you know, like you don't even realize what the spam words are, cuz that wasn't a skill set that a salesperson needed to know.
Yeah. Maybe the marketing manager might know, cause they've been sending emails for decades, but this now has to filter through to the sales team. So there's a whole lot of people. Challenges, process challenges and technical challenges now. Yeah. At ground zero.
[00:19:48] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. So we're at step zero. You've now blown the mind for many of the sales professionals, listening to this going, what the hell is D mark DK, this, that, and the other.
Right. So yeah. Now, before I know this is not the episode where we're gonna go technically into this, right. But can you maybe share a, a, a URL that you've shared previously? Sure. That if salespeople want to check, if their emails have got spam words, if there are any issues with their emails, what's a URL they can use to check.
[00:20:16] Ricky Pearl: Sure. We, we can drop some in the show notes. There's like right. Mail, tester, mail, genius, mail meteor yep. All of these free service. Literally takes you five minutes and can change the course of your, the trajectory of your, of your career, because it's a difference between success or failure, if your messages are being delivered or not.
[00:20:34] Luigi Prestinenzi: Awesome. So we're gonna put those in the show notes. I think they're, and, and I use 'em all the time, right? So, so for, for, for all my listeners, this is actually really important stuff. Right. We've got, we've gotta, when we talk about the, the, the, that planning and is the foundation for success, right? So.
Before we start executing, we've got step zero. We're gonna just make sure that we've got everything set up in the background so that we can give out. We can increase the chances of success. So step zero, set your structure up, right. Step one, define your market and be very clear on who you're gonna be engaging with.
Step two is defining the message, making sure that it's problem focused versus product so that you're not pitching your features.
[00:21:14] Ricky Pearl: It, it, it has to be relevant, right? That's the most important thing. Like everyone's very. Focused at the moment on personalization. Yeah. A Luigi. I heard you, you like to use this particular product in your hair, by the way, what are you doing for your HR payroll solutions? Yeah. You know, like that's personalized, but it's not relevant. That messaging is, is key as well.
[00:21:37] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely.
[00:21:37] Ricky Pearl: But yeah.
[00:21:38] Luigi Prestinenzi: So we show them, we know them and we make sure it's relevant. Right? So the personalization connects to relevance. Then step four is we're gonna check our, our, our channel. So which channel they're gonna be using. And obviously we advocate a omnichannel approach once we do that. Yeah, for sure. What's the next step that we have to execute on when it comes time to running an effective outreach strategy.
[00:21:58] Ricky Pearl: So, so we start looking for conversion. Yep. And. At the moment we've made assumptions. We've made assumptions on the, on the audience.
We've made assumptions on the message and then we've made assumptions on the channel, cuz we're doing omnichannel. We're calling first. Are we emailing first? Are we starting off fast and slowing down or we're starting slow and speeding up. There's a whole lot of different things. And. When you add these variables together, there's like 10 variables on your audience and 10 variables on your message and 10 variables on your cadence.
All of a sudden you have a thousand different variances here and different options of how this is all configured. So now we want to go through a scientific approach of maximizing conversion. So we start off slow, you know, we start off like send 10 emails. Did we get a response? Mm, no, maybe tweak. All right, send another 30 emails.
Did we get a response? Was it re positive, negative tweak, tweak, tweak, and keep tweaking until you've got the channel. Right. You know, what we'll find for example is we'll start off a campaign and we're realizing emails aren't working. Yeah. On this campaign calls are, are killing it. Right. Let's do more calling less emailing.
Mm. Right? Like these are the, these are the things that we do to start maximizing. So we are changing the, the, the cadences. Tweaking the message. Yeah. And looking for refinements within that audience. So at the same time, we're trying to lift them all up, make a tighter fit, to tighter fit, to tighter fit and just keep optimizing that campaign.
And once that campaign is running smoothly, effectively with high conversion, we pick up the second ICP. All right, great. So now we were calling X, this, this market for this particular pain. let's try now pick up the next one.
[00:23:39] Luigi Prestinenzi: So you're hyper you're hyper personalizing and you you're segmenting. You're becoming very laser focused. And then once you've got the conversion outcome, you then migrate to other ICP. So I'm absolutely loving this content. Do you mind sharing the importance with our group of your data? So when you've built your ICP and your buy a persona. You know why they should be really thinking about using data enrichment tools to build that list out so they have the relevant contact info?
[00:24:06] Ricky Pearl: Data is like the, you know, data's the new, the new oil.
[00:24:10] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah.
[00:24:10] Ricky Pearl: It's it changes everything. So there's so many things that go into the data, right? So firstly, there's just the accuracy of the data. Can I contact you via email, via LinkedIn via your, your, your mobile number?
We have campaigns, for example, where mobile is 80% of the meetings we get books will be off for mobile. Yep. But if I can't get people's mobile numbers, now I have to use email or LinkedIn or some of the other channels. And I know those are less effective channels. Yep. No finding the art data is lubricates air, the entire motion within that data.
There's different pieces, right? So like some data. Easily relevant and targetable and achievable. And some of it's much harder and much rely on a trigger or timing. Yeah. Right. So for example, I use that I'm buying a house. Well, you could look at data. Hey, this person meets this LSM group. He earns roughly this kind of income, or he has this title.
He's probably in the property market. He might fit our ICP. Like that's not very tight. If you could go one level deeper to know that a purchased land. now you've got a much better data, right? Because you're gonna be targeting better. If you could go one level deeper to know that the house that I bought is clearly a knockdown I'm gonna be developing.
Now it's even more laser focused. Now, just off that data, you could Harper personalize and make this, make it relevant without even knowing me. Hey, Ricky, I, I know you just bought some, a land. I'm assuming you're gonna develop. Right. And that was still all on the research. you could probably go even one step further than that too.
[00:25:51] Luigi Prestinenzi: So this is good. So now we're talking about becoming more mature in the way that we approach this and look at the trigger events and intent data that allow us to really connect the relevant message to them and hyper personalize it even further. So I'm absolutely loving this, I think for all of our listeners, We've got from step zero.
We're already up to step seven. Right? And I love the fact that you talk about testing. Do you mind sharing why testing a campaign or a cadence with a smaller sample group will yield a greater return over the long term?
[00:26:29] Ricky Pearl: There there's two big pieces here and you'll appreciate this. Right? So much of the sales advice comes out of the states.
They're like, Hey, use this human assisted parallel dial. You can make a thousand calls in an hour and I'd be like, then who am I gonna call the next hour? Because that is my total market here in Australia. Right? Like, we don't have this, we don't have this market size in most of these countries. Like, yeah.
Yeah. You can just send a thousand emails a day. I'm like, and then I'll and what do I do next week? Like, do I just close up my shop? I've spoken to everyone. They all said no, like find a new job. Yeah. Find a new business. So like you have to focus on quality in markets like this. It's more of an account based marketing motion.
Yeah. By default in our, in, in, in a market like this and conversion in outbound, because you don't know where there are in their buy cycle, we'd make that assumption that 3% of the market at any given stage is. is in the market. They're ready to buy. Mm. So if you send out, if you spoke to a hundred people, you should succeed with three of them, but 30 of them are willing to entertain the concept.
And that's where the real value is. Can you yeah. Convert up the, that extra 30%. Can you get them to engage with you? And it's all about maximizing that conversion and. Spaming your Tam, your total addressable markets and just churning through your Tam. Yeah. And companies get this wrong cuz they see, oh my sales rep is getting me one meeting a day.
That's what I expected from them. But what's the opportunity cost. How many people have said no. Yeah. In order for them to get that one. Yes. Yeah. And is that hurting you in the long run? Like are you bringing forward today and it's going and paying for it tomorrow? Yeah. So increasing conversion is. Is everything.
And at the same time as a business, you should always be interested in those nos. Cause if a one in a hundred is saying yes to you, what about the 99? Cause you build up those ones, right? You get one in a hundred, say yes to you. You build up those into a hundred customers. And now you're getting feedback from these a hundred customers and you you're working with your a hundred customers to put information back into your product developments, but there's actually a hundred thousand who said no to you.
Yeah. And if you could build in the features for them, if you could help understand their challenges and you were going more towards getting more people to say, yes, that's a much bigger market than the a hundred. You have.
[00:29:03] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely. I love what you're talking about, right. Because I think, I think for anyone that's in an indivi, it's just for everyone.
Right. But I think, you know, as an individual contributor, there's only so many things that we can control. We can't focus on the things that we can't control, but again, If I'm running and this is why I'm a big believer quality over quantity. Right. Always I've shared my numbers with my audience. Ricky. I sit it around 15 to 25% of people that I reach out to.
I'm gonna get into a book meeting. Yeah. Yeah. And am I doing a hundred outreaches a day? No, but I don't need to, because I do what you say, looking for trigger events. I'm trying to make sure it's. The message is strong. And the point of view that I'm bringing to table, people want to hear.
[00:29:48] Ricky Pearl: You wanna work smarter, not harder.
[00:29:50] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely.
[00:29:50] Ricky Pearl: Here's the, if you wanna go from 10 to 20 and typically there's a diminishing return on investments on effort. Yeah. Right. So to get that next 10 took takes more effort than to get the 10 that you've already gotten and to do the 10 after that's even more so as a sales professional, if you are looking to grow.
What's your only option, do more, do more, do more, do more it's bloody tiring. Yeah. And you're gonna burn out. Absolutely. But if you could do smarter and achieve more by doing less now you've got efficiency. Yeah. Now you can scale. Now you can do well and thrive.
[00:30:25] Luigi Prestinenzi: So this is awesome. And I know we haven't gone into the tactical element of making that cold call, structuring that email today.
Yeah. I think the fact that you've shared your blueprint of, Hey, these are some of the key things that we need to do in order to set up an effective outreach strategy. You know, I know that we haven't got much time, but do you mind sharing with me sort of when you are coming up with that messaging framework?
What are some of the, you know, what are some of the must haves in your messaging framework? I know you said, you know, you've gotta personalize, you've gotta show relevance, but can you just give us an example of what that should sound like so that our listeners can kind of go, you know what? I've got the blueprint now and here's even structure that I should be using.
[00:31:06] Ricky Pearl: I'll I'll go one level higher. So firstly, like we've built out the seven process. Yeah. On this call. My actual to-do list. When I set up a new outbound is 197. Right. And 12 different stages. Okay. Which we achieved normally over two to three months, like, yeah, there's a lot that goes into this. So when we are talking about emails, here's, here's some of the things that we do a bit differently.
Firstly, our first email we'll normally have four or five different variants going out. Why? Yep. Well, because we testing. Art, you know, I'm not, I'm not a magician. I can't tell you which is gonna be the best message over time maybe, but we testing. And so we can put different structures. It actually makes it easier.
Cause if you have to choose a perfect email front, it's very hard. Yeah. But if you just have to choose your best five, well, it's actually a bit easier. So we'll put in five variants upfront that also does something else incredibly important. It reduces the amount of the same emails going out from your server.
or being received by servers, cuz that same email going out on, on mass gets flagged to spam. Yeah. Each email being unique increases delivery. So we'll always write five of the first email, four of the second email, three of the third. Cause presumably as people are moving through our cadence, they're getting converted yes.
Or nos and so less of email fours going out than email one as an example. So that's something we always do in our emails in terms of the actual wording. I am massive there. There's two things. I'll do go click on your spam folder. Right. Now you look at your spam, read all of those emails, whatever those say, don't do that.
[00:32:48] Luigi Prestinenzi: We got, we got heaps of Grady. That's right. You're I love this. Like, you have examples of what not to do in your junk folder, right? Yeah. Looking at I'm gonna go to mine right now. Right? Cause I, I do this when I'm running courses
[00:33:00] Ricky Pearl: And it changes. So at the moment, the things that used to work for us in outbound that were new and novel don't work anymore because it's now been picked up internationally. It's now everyone's doing that. And so now that's all what's, that's being seen as your typical spamer. So you've gotta be different.
[00:33:16] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely. I've got this. The F the, the Philippines booming economy are driving more Australian than I open it. And it tells me, do I want outsourced people, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've got mate heaps, these emails in my, in my in my junk folder. So that's a great strategy for anyone.
[00:33:33] Ricky Pearl: So there we go. That that's what not to do. So what to do, I like to think, like, firstly, what kind of an email do I wanna receive? Right.
Like I'm a human, I'm a person I'm a busy professional. So are you, so the people I'm trying to contact to yeah. What do they wanna receive? And honestly, I just want it to be short. I want it to be sharp. I want it to be the point. I don't want to like all of this wanky different, like, you know, we've been renowned and this whole company history, so we keep it as short as.
You know, Hey Luigi, you're building out some incredible stuff with Sales IQ, listen to your recent podcast that had, you know, talking about had Todd Capone on bloody inspirational. Loved that mountain, whatever. I might not even go into that much detail mm-hmm but just to show you that, like I'm not some person yeah.
Like that email, you just read outsourcing from the Philippines. So just one line and it doesn't matter what that one line is. I'm just saying, Hey Lou E. I'm a normal person here in Melbourne. Yeah. That's all I want you to read in my first line. I can't say that. Yeah, but that's what I want you to know.
And then I'll just go straight into it, you know? Mm. Like how you getting this? So how you're doing that, or you're probably struggling with this 65 words, 125 words is maximum. Yeah. And signed off simply. We normally use no signatures because it decreases delivery, but that's all into the technical stuff. Super simple messaging.
[00:34:59] Luigi Prestinenzi: And I love that. And you know what, you know, I'm a big fan of will from Lavender who shares some incredible tips on LinkedIn. Exactly. And he's been on our show before, so.
[00:35:08] Ricky Pearl: That would be my, my exact thing. Like, yeah, I'm not the email, I'm not the writing expert. We got a copywriter on our team, but you can use Lavender.
You could write your own message, but if you're using a scientific approach of optimizing, then it doesn't really matter what your message is. Each week, each fortnight each month, he's just gonna make it better and better and better.
[00:35:27] Luigi Prestinenzi: Do you know what? This is? One of the things that I look as much as I love will from lavender, he talks about 50 words, 11 seconds, mate.
I've sent emails that are a hundred words, but because they're very personalized, it's very relevant. Yeah. I've got my meeting and I, and there we see levels. I've got one, I've got one coming up. Yeah. 15 minutes that I reach out to the chief commercial. And I got the meeting. Right. And it wasn't damn it wasn't 50 words. It was about 80 90 words.
[00:35:51] Ricky Pearl: Okay. There's huge cultural things. A lot of the advice that everyone's getting from these American gurus and they are exceptional and maybe in two years time, we'll need to be following that advice. culturally things are different in every country. Absolutely. And you have to be relevant for that country when I'm prospecting into Japan.
If I tried a 65 word email, I'm not getting response, I could write a 1000 word email in Japan. And if it's relevant and to the right person, they will read every single word of it and compose a formal response.
[00:36:23] Luigi Prestinenzi: But you you're absolutely right. But in saying that by prospect into the us. I don't always follow the 50 word rule and I get meetings because again, for me, I'd rather demonstrate because I'm not doing mass volume.
I'm going, Hey, you know, I've, I've, you know, I've got a recent one that I said, Hey, I've just understand X. I also noticed your competitor is growing X, you know, in the, this total addressable market, this is what they're doing. I think there's a way for you to achieve X ban chief for revenue officer responded within about eight minutes.
Amazing. When do you wanna meet? Right. So we could talk about this for hours, Ricky, and I think we've got another episode, which we're gonna have to get you on. And you know what, mate, I don't have a lot of people that come on twice onto the Saki podcast. I think we've only ever had. two people come in our show twice, but I think you're a candidate to come on, but
[00:37:10] Ricky Pearl: Geez, that would be, that would be an honor.
Yeah. And this time he'll be running folks he'll be running on. I'll be going six and a half kilometres at least.
[00:37:18] Luigi Prestinenzi: Hey just before we wrap up, where's the best place for our listeners to engage, find how can they find you and your walking content? What's the best place.
[00:37:28] Ricky Pearl: So pretty much on LinkedIn. Yeah. Right. Like that's the best way to, to engage with me. I'm in a lot of the different sales channels, you know? You can get my phone number off LinkedIn phone me. Like I always, I appreciate a good cold call. Yeah, you that's. That's how I do my recruitment. I like wait for good cold callers. I'm like, yeah, this person's good.
Right. He's got, Hey, is this call being recorded? Yeah. Yeah. We need you. We need you on the, a team. But yeah, LinkedIn's a great place to engage and like I love it cuz I want to learn from, I have something to learn from everyone as well.
[00:37:57] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Awesome. Ricky, well mate, I just wanna say you know, obviously we, we're gonna put your LinkedIn URL in the show notes.
I wanna say, man, I actually do value content. There's been a lot of useful URLs that I've picked up. You've given me food for thought, when it comes to my outreach. And this is what I love doing, what we do, right? Because I am only scratching the surface of what's possible. And our listeners are on this listeners, listen to this show every week because they're trying to be the best they can be.
So I wanna say thanks for the contribution you make to our community.
[00:38:25] Ricky Pearl: Well thank you. And thank you for the work that you're doing. Like I've taken so much inspiration from your podcast, from the. From the whole group, you know, I'd call it a group, but I could also call it an enterprise or like a, the people involved in your network are, are changing the face of sales. And it's fantastic to be close to the action.
[00:38:44] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Well, thanks Ricky. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
[00:38:46] Ricky Pearl: Cheers.
[00:38:47] Credits: This show has been recorded remotely produced by Sales IQ Global, audio editing and music production by Stefan Malliate. Show notes by Victoria Mathieson and graphic design by Julie Marshall. Don't forget to leave a rating and review on your podcast player. And if you want to find more about the programs that we offer at Sales IQ, head to www.salesiqglobal.com
This episode was digitally transcribed.
