Tip #1: Use your research when appropriate.
If you were able to find some interesting information through your research, you should leverage that in your subject line as well. In the example above, we discovered that the prospect had written an article. An appropriate subject line to use could be “Your article about avoiding hiring mistakes”.
Tip #2: Try using the prospect’s name.
Using the prospects name can be an effective way to boost your open rate. When someone sees their name it draws their eye quickly, because it’s so familiar. This coupled with a strong first sentence is a good recipe to get anyone to open an email.
Tip #3: Avoid hype.
I strongly recommend avoiding subject lines that comes across salesy or automated. For example “Increase your productivity 50%!” Always tailor the subject line to the person that you are sending the email to. For example “Question about your recent round of funding” or “Ideas for improving your hiring process.”
Other Sequence-Related Emails
Throughout a sequence you will be sending more than one type of email. You will be trying different techniques to get the prospect to respond. I have drilled down these emails into 4 different categories: reminder, second angle, wake up, and break up.
Reminder
The reminder is the simplest email you will send and perfect for automation. The goal of this email is to remind the prospect that we sent them an email in order to elicit a response. The response email should be a reply to the first email you sent, so your prospect doesn’t have to go digging for it. Here is an example of a reminder email.
Good morning Jessica,
Did you get my last email by chance?
Second angle
Another email that you will be sending is what I call the second angle. This email is built using a different problem that your product or service solves. The problem you bring to the prospect’s attention in the first email might not resonate with them. The second angle email gives us another shot at building some interest. Read the example below, and notice it fits our first emails structure.
Hi Jessica,
I sent you an email the other day and felt it was worth following up.
I speak with people who are responsible for the hiring process and they tell me they spend a lot of time reading resumes of candidates who aren’t qualified.
We help fast growing tech companies use A.I. to screen resumes and make sure only qualified candidates make it through. This results in hours of freed-up time and quicker identification of the highest quality applicants. If this resonates, we should set up a quick call. Do you have some time tomorrow at 11am?
Wake up
Your contacts may get far through your sequence without you being able to connect with them. As they get closer to the end, we change our email strategy from trying to find a time to have a call to getting a response. This next email is called the wake up, because it’s designed to “wake up” the prospect and get a response from them.
Hi Jessica,
I’ve made a few attempts to connect about helping with your recruiting efforts.
Is there someone else I should speak with or is now just a bad time?
Let me know either way so I can follow up accordingly.
Best,
Kyle
Break up
The final email of your sequence is called the break up. This is our final attempt to get the prospect to respond. We have made multiple attempts to contact this prospect, from phone calls to LinkedIn; nothing was successful. So now it’s time for a last-ditch effort. At this point you have a lot of flexibility with what you can try, so feel free to experiment. Below is an example that makes me laugh.
Hi Jessica,
I’ve been reaching out for a few weeks now and have not received a response. When this happens it is usually for 1 of 3 reasons.
1. You are interested but are swamped and haven’t been able to respond
2. You aren’t interested and are hoping that I go away
3. A filing cabinet has fallen on you and you can’t get up
If it’s number 1 or 2, just respond back with the appropriate number and I will respond accordingly. If it’s number 3... Should I call 911?
Best,
Kyle
Post call email
The final email I want to cover in this chapter is the post call email. You will use this email if you’ve had a good conversation with a prospect, but they didn’t schedule a meeting. The purpose of this email is to reinforce the positive interaction that you had and start to build a relationship that will help with future follow ups. Here’s an example of a post call email.
Subject: It was a pleasure speaking with you.
Hi Jessica,
Thanks so much for your time on the phone today. I appreciate you filling me in about the challenge you’re having keeping track of your most qualified candidates. You’re not alone. This is a common problem for most companies growing at your speed.
Here is a [Link] blog post from a month ago that goes into detail about this issue. I look forward to reconnecting in January. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions.
Best,
Kyle
Using LinkedIn
The effectiveness of LinkedIn is going to vary greatly based on industry, decision maker, and your product or service. How you plan to fit LinkedIn into your overall prospecting strategy is going to be a decision that you, or your company, will have to make. In this section we will cover my suggestion of where LinkedIn fits in your prospecting strategy and how to use it to engage with your prospects.
How LinkedIn fits in your prospecting
There’s a lot of debate around how SDRs should be leveraging social media in their prospecting efforts, specifically LinkedIn. Some say it should be your very first touch, while others suggest utilizing it as a backup tool when your other connection attempts have failed. I fall into the second camp in most situations and here’s why. We’ve spoken a lot about time management in this book and at this point you should be sold on its importance. My opinion is that LinkedIn is not widely used enough in most industries to be worth using it as a first touch. To be clear, if you are selling into an industry where LinkedIn is actively used by most decision makers, then you will want to leverage this tool more.
Sending LinkedIn Direct Messages
LinkedIn requires that you subscribe to their Sales Navigator product in order to send messages to people you aren’t connected with. These messages will go wasted if sent to a prospect who doesn’t have the LinkedIn app and who rarely checks the website. There are some industries where the opposite is true, for example, tech companies. If you are in an industry with heavy LinkedIn activity then use it early. If not, stick with a more traditional means of communication. Then, after the first three or four touches, leverage LinkedIn.
It is also important to mention that LinkedIn may temporarily ban your account if you send too many connection requests that have a low acceptance rate and you are not a Sales Navigator user. So, don’t try to connect with every contact at every account that you find. Instead, send a connection request to the prospects that you’ve connected with as a way to stay in touch with them. This will increase your chances of being accepted as a connection and getting the opportunity to engage with your prospect via LinkedIn.
The LinkedIn Message
Writing emails and sending messages seem similar on the surface, but they vary deeply in application. Typically, you will be sending a message to a prospect through LinkedIn after attempting to connect with them via phone and email. Because of this, you shouldn’t copy and paste the email and click send, because it will definitely have a negative impact. Use LinkedIn as a follow-up touchpoint, referencing our previous contact attempts, and offering our prospect an easier way to communicate. Let’s
take a look at an example related to our example email from the email section.
Good morning Jessica,
I sent you an email the other day with my thoughts regarding your recent article, great stuff! I’m messaging in case you prefer to communicate this way.
We help fast growing tech companies reduce the amount of days between interviews, resulting in a 30% decrease in time from application to offer and a 15% increase in successful hires. If this resonates, we should set up a quick call. Do you have some time tomorrow at 11am?
If there’s a better contact, please feel free to send me their way.
Best,
Kyle
As you can see, this message is more casual, shorter, and gives them the option of referring us to someone else. One of the sentences that I think is powerful is “I’m messaging in case you prefer to communicate this way.” It comes across as thoughtful as well as assumptive. It assumes that the prospect was going to respond and you just wanted to make it easier for them to do so. Additionally, giving the prospect the option of referring us to someone else is great when sending follow-up messages, because it is possible they aren’t the right contact. Simply asking for a better contact can motivate the prospect to connect you with someone else, a possible decision maker or stakeholder.
Interacting with prospects on LinkedIn
Another component of using LinkedIn is interacting with your prospects outside of sending them a message. This typically will come in the form of engaging with their posts or engaging with them in comments. You will have to be connected with the prospect to see these, and typically that would happen if you have connected before in the past. You may be planning on calling them in a few months like they asked. Interacting with their posts is a great way to stay top of mind without coming across salesly. I have two tips for interacting with prospects on LinkedIn.
Tip #1: Never sell.
A comment on a public LinkedIn post is a horrible place to try and book a meeting. The goal of your engagement is to compliment or add value. If your prospect posted about a recent company success, congratulate them. If they shared an article about a topic that you’re familiar with, add to the conversation. This will keep you on the top of their mind which is important for when the prospect has a need for your product or service before the time that they requested you call back.
Tip #2: Take advantage of groups.
Join groups that are related to the industry, especially when your prospect is a member. Don’t just lurk in these groups, contribute. Remember what I said early on in this book? You must become an expert in your industry. Engage in conversations with the goal of adding value, even tag your prospect to get their opinion. This is a great way to learn more about the industry you serve as well as make new connections.
Conclusion
You made it through the densest chapter in this book! Feel proud, especially considering that the vast majority of people don’t read more than one chapter of any book. I hope that you are walking away from this chapter with a deeper understanding of the prospecting process, about understanding of how sequences work, and how to build one of your own, and how to construct emails and use LinkedIn. Finally, I hope you see how all the different touch points work together to maximize your opportunity of a booked meeting.
APOLLO
While we’re on the topic of strategy and tactics, one thing that I’d like to add is that tools can be a very powerful way to execute your strategy. We’ve discussed how sales engagement platforms can aid you in your prospecting, but one tool that I feel is worth highlighting is Apollo. After using and evaluating multiple tools, I’ve realized that Apollo is one that has a high potential to help both beginners and experts in outbound sales.
Tools like Apollo keep you organized on a daily basis, and help you gain visibility into where your sales process has the most room for improvement. An interesting thing about Apollo is that it is an all-in-one tool to help you find your target accounts and contacts, enrich your current CRM data, and get in touch with decision makers, by executing on sequences. As mentioned in the previous chapter, sequences allow you to create a repeatable process of reaching out to contacts with multiple touch points over a period of time, including the channels that were covered earlier in this book such as emails, calls, LinkedIn messages, etc.
Sequencing tools are great, but something that sets Apollo apart from the competition is their “Playbooks” feature. The major limitation of sequences is that you can only add individual contacts to them, which isn’t a big deal if you’re only working one to two contacts per account. The challenge is keeping track of all the contacts within each account once you achieve full account penetration, and how each of those accounts is progressing.
The Playbooks feature allows you to add an account into its own Playbook, which will then walk you through a designated process of how to work through that account, and automatically add contacts into the correct sequences based on their titles, seniority levels, and locations. This is all possible because Apollo has a database of 200 million contacts fueling their solution.
This workflow saves a lot of time on the more tedious parts of an Account-Based Sales process, and allows you to stay organized, receive better insights, and dramatically increase productivity. Additionally, using a tool like Apollo to execute your workflow allows you to see which types of market segments and buyer personas your outbound process is working well in. Then, you can use analytics to decide what changes to make to your sales strategy.
If you are choosing to use all of the channels mentioned in this book for your outbound process, Apollo’s dialer becomes valuable to your reps. It allows them to stay in one place for prospecting and engagement by simply being able to click on any call task to reach a prospect and then syncing that activity with their CRM. From a coaching perspective, Apollo also records and transcribes your calls so that you can easily search through calls that mention specific topics and always provide your reps with the best learning examples.
We cover email templates in this book but there is an interesting template that Krishan Patel, the Director of Growth at Apollo, shared with me for emails that send out directly after a prospect fails to answer a call. Check it out below.
{{first_name}},
Tried calling you, but you must’ve been busy.
Thought you might be interested in this article by Harvard Business Review on how to build a great sales force. We help companies with the points around [pieces of the article that are relevant to your solution].
I’ll keep trying you over the phone, but please reach out if you have a specific day/time in mind!
Thanks,
{{sender_first_name}}
Finally, I think it is worth mentioning that Apollo has a free data tool which allows you to find new accounts and contacts. The fact that they give access to their database for free is one of the main reasons why I felt it was necessary to include them in this book, so that even beginners can take their first step into outbound sales.
Check them out at https://www.apollo.io .
Metrics, Organization, and Workflow
Metrics and Identifying Improvements
At the core of every sales development rep’s role, there’s a game of numbers. There are multiple metrics that you can track, which will help illuminate the areas you need to improve. Tracking your own performance is incredibly important because it will give you insight into those areas that you should focus on. Let’s look at all the metrics that are relevant to your role as an SDR.
Activities - How many calls, emails, and LinkedIn touches you have made.
Connects - How many decision makers you have connected with.
Sets - How many meetings you have set.
Completes - How many of your meetings took place.
Futures - How many meetings you have scheduled for a later date.
SA
Os - How many Sales Accepted Opportunities you have.
Closes - How many of your meetings have closed.
Note 1: These vary in relevance depending on how your company measures SDR performance. Some use sales accepted opportunity (SAO). When the salesperson has agreed that this prospect is a viable sales opportunity that’s worth adding to their pipeline. Other companies may evaluate their SDR team on completes, or even closes. You want to closely track up to the point where its relevant to your unique situation.
That being said, you should always keep an eye on how your efforts are impacting the company up stream. Don’t just focus on the SAO and move on. Watch that opportunity mature through the sales process and get excited when you see it close. It was your effort that made that opportunity possible!
Note 2: You should also track each outreach method separately—calls, emails, and LinkedIn. That way you can evaluate the effectiveness of each and allocate your time accordingly. For this section I will have these three metrics blended for simplicity, but you should be aware that ideally you would track all methods of outreach individually.
Why are these metrics relevant? Because they tell the story of your effort and help you solve the mystery of your performance. It will also help you understand what you must do in order to achieve the goals you want, so lets walk through an example.
Jamal is a sales development rep at ABC Company and he’s trying to achieve 15 SAOs a month, because this is his quota. Last month Jamal missed his quota by 2 SAOs and he has no idea why, since his activity level is high. He tracks his metrics and wants to figure out where he went wrong last month. Here’s what he’s looking at….
What do you see when you look at these metrics? Let’s first look at his activity level. Jamal made 2500 activities over the span of a 20 day month—that’s 125 activities a day. His peers are accomplishing 85 activities a day, which puts Jamal way above the average in this area. Now let’s take a look at his connects—375. Considering both activities and connects, this works out to a 15% connect rate which, compared to Jamal’s peers, is pretty average. Not much to note here so let’s move onto the next number—sets. He was able to set 60 meetings from those 375 connects and thats a 16% conversion rate, which is about 2% lower than his peers (let’s make a note of that). The next metric is completes. He had 18 completes last month. This works out to a 30% completion rate, compared to the 45% most of his peers achieve. Are your alarm bells ringing? Lets make sure we check the final metric just to make sure we cover all our bases. He achieved 13 of the 15 SAOs he needed to hit his quota. Those 13 SAOs came from 18 completes which put him at a 72% SAO rate, far above his peers who averaged 60%.
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