Thoughts on Outbound Sales for Early Stage SaaS Startups

I took a grind-it-out SDR manager role here at Avoma - this means, roll your sleeves up and build the outbound function. There was no team humming along already to inherit.

Some thoughts on how I've been approaching it (these probably apply to you):

First action item was to solidify the process around inbound leads. Avoma has plenty of web traffic, demo signups, and free trial users. If you do not have any inbound traffic, you should figure that out first. This gives outbound something to build on.

Having tried to do outbound where there is no inbound feels like pushing on rope. Usually means product-market fit is not established and your job is next to impossible.

Founders (early stage): Invest more in marketing than you do sales and close the deals yourself.

Next is to build a workflow for myself around generating some opportunities aside from inbound. I'm doing some of this through my network and not following most of the traditional advice you see here on LinkedIn. That does not mean it is bad advice, however, it does not apply just yet. We're getting there.

The goal of outbound at this stage is to build awareness so that we can compete with the bigger players in our space. Yes, of course I would like to directly source closed/won deals - but sometimes the outcome is "We're using Gong right now, not super happy with the value there, will consider you when we renew" - mega score.

Another set of actions I'm taking center around deals from the last 12 months that need to be re-engaged or were lost to a competitor. Who did we lose to, when is the renewal? I've built some fields in HubSpot for information gathering to help guide us here. Addressing the web traffic is another direction. We're using something to track website visitors & I'm scanning these daily, trying to make sure I find 10 companies each day and add them to my list for contextualized outreach.

BTW - "contextualization > personalization" could be the next wave in prospecting.

Context is key, especially when it comes to reaching out to potential clients. Highlighting personal interests may grab attention, but it doesn't necessarily lead to new business. Instead, providing relevant information to give your outreach context can make all the difference. By taking the time to understand a prospect's business and how your software applies, you show that you're not just trying to sell something, but that you're invested in their success.

For example - Avoma is reaching out to Gong users. The fact that I know they are a Gong user and have a very targeted message that relates the two solutions, how they are different, and why Avoma might be a better choice for them gets me to the same place I might have been trying to get by mentioning their personal interests.

The prevailing wisdom in sales development is that if the message is about the prospect, they are more likely to consume your message and respond. What we are really doing, though, is trying to avoid tripping the prospect's defense mechanism that is triggered when they get some generic piece of outreach. A mass templated email with generic information about the software or service you are selling comes off as a feeble attempt to extract money from the prospect's business and is very "seller-centric".

However, stepping into their world and showing you understand their position by giving context to your outreach avoids this in the same way.

There are 3 things I look for as I'm reaching out to a completely cold list:

1) Do you know anyone I know?

2) Does any of your work history include a business I have as a customer already?

3) Can I provide any additional context through technographic data, network connections, company stages (upcoming funding rounds*, etc)

*Reaching out after the funding round has occurred is the same thing everyone else is doing and trips the alarm regardless. Try to work backwards from the previous funding round and anticipate when they may be prepping for raising another round or already have it locked in but have not gone public yet. Again, same goal - you want the prospect to say to themselves, "Wow yeah this is a timely message" or "This must have taken some thinking to come up with".

The personal tidbits might get you there some of the time, but think about how popular this strategy has become over the last 5+ years. Everyone is doing that and the prospect can now categorize your "personalized" outreach as an attempt to win them business, completely defeating the purpose.

I'm thinking this process through from first principles. If I showed up and loaded up a LinkedIn feed advice sequence into Apollo and ran at 200-500 leads a week, I might accidentally land on 1 or more businesses who happen to be in the market. But what would this mean? No context outreach that is only designed to land on the 2% of the market in an active buying window, and annoying the other 98% with outreach that doesn't mean anything to them.We are planning on a few call blitz scenarios, but it is not the bread and butter. Is this how you should build your outbound sales function? I don't know, I'm not there. This is what we are doing.

My advice is to think it through, take everything I am saying and multiply it by 0. Then come up with your own process.

#sales #salestips