Rethinking Outbound: Why More Emails Don’t Equal More Pipeline

And the approach of more emails can be detrimental to your growth!

Dearest Marketers,

There's much more to Outbound than sending emails. Funny, I should say that when I'm in the midst of promoting my Outbound Copywriting Workshop for Marketers.

I see many marketers in a mad race to set up domains and multiple inboxes, warm them up, and perform all sorts of email wizardry just to send thousands upon thousands of outbound emails weekly.

Some even brag about sending 5,000 to 50,000 emails a week as if it's a badge of honor.

While it may work for some of you, it's short lived. I've seen this firsthand.

Furthermore, this approach DOES NOT WORK if you are a:

• B2B SaaS company selling a technical product to a technical audience with varying use cases, such as Auth0, OneTrust, and Axonious.

• Seed to Series B startup looking to build a thriving outbound engine that generates pipeline consistently, reliably, and repeatedly.

Here’s the truth:

💡 Sending MORE emails does not translate to MORE sales discovery calls,
which means it does not translate to more Pipeline!

This Newtonian and reductionist approach is hubris. It ignores that our buyers are humans with feelings and thoughts and that markets are fluid and cyclical. Like nature, they ebb and flow.

This is exactly why what worked six months ago may stop working this month.

Throughout 2017, while I was building and leading Outbound at Auth0, we were NOT Sending 5,000 to 10,000 emails a week to build a pipeline. Each SDR and myself included picked our Top 40 Tier 1 accounts every quarter. With Demand Gen, we picked our Top 5000 accounts that we outbound as a team for the year.  

We (the SDR and Demand Gen team) were methodical, calculated, and ruthless with execution.  Imagine watching a Bengal Tiger hunting a deer! 

It is never rushed. It is methodical, calculated, and ruthless in execution. 

As we often say in Surfing, “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”  

Here are 6 recommended practical steps to ensure Outbound generates sales pipeline.

1. Do Not Skip The Fundamentals
   Skipping the fundamentals is like skipping warm-up, CNS activation, and cooldown for your workout. You may feel great for a few months, but then you'll wake up one morning with a sore back and wonder what happened. "Yeah, you skipped the fundamentals, bozo!" I've written extensively on The Outbound Fundamentals.
   

2. Effectiveness Over Efficiency
   Effectiveness is doing the right things right. Efficiency is doing the right things fast. Focus on identifying the degree of rightness and accuracy for your ideal personas, company profiles, triggers, use cases, behaviors, pain points, priorities, market influences, etc.
   
   Absolutes are hard to come by, and we want to execute and experiment like mad scientists so that we know we are effective in our Outbound hypothesis and approach!

3. Ruthless Experimentation and Execution
   Do not stew in your analysis! If you have faith in the degree of accuracy, then let’s
   execute to determine the rightness and accuracy of your hypothesis.
   
   Don't be shy about launching programs. The learnings will make you wiser, stronger, and faster! Your goal is to create sales opportunities and pipeline.
   

4. Be Open to Change
   Your Ideal Personas (Buyers and Users), Target accounts, industries, use cases, triggers, and intent will change over time. It's normal and healthy. Humans are part of nature, and markets are cyclical. They ebb and flow.
   
   And you, too, have to adapt to the changes.
   

5. Focus on Pipeline Creation
   Without pipeline, there won’t be closed-won deals. The math is straightforward. This is why the fundamentals are crucial. They ensure you're addressing the pains and priorities of the right persona and leveraging use cases and triggers to pique curiosity, gain attention, and earn time on your buyer’s calendar.
   

6. Direction Over Speed. Quality Over Quantity
   This means you won’t be moving fast. By fast, I mean you won’t get outbound right in the first six months.
   
   Your first six months of outbound are to master the fundamentals, build relationships with Sales (if you are in Marketing), experiment and execute ruthlessly, and suss out the triggers, use cases, and personas with the highest degree of accuracy and propensity to be your buyers.

So, as you reflect on how you’re doing Outbound, have done outbound, or are planning to build outbound, remember that speed, quantity, and efficiency are not your friends in the early phases of outbound.

Instead, Effectiveness, rightness, accuracy, and quality are your Outbound BFFs.

Happy Outbounding,
Rachael T.