Outreach Prospecting Criteria

If 2024 taught us anything about Cold Email, it’s this: 👇 General ICP Outreach isn’t enough to drive results anymore. With deliverability getting tougher every day, there’s only one way to make outbound work: → Intent-Based Targeting Here’s how we do it at SalesCaptain to book 3x more demos ⬇️ Step 1️⃣ Identify High-Intent Triggers The goal? Find prospects showing buying signals. ✅ Website visits – Someone browsing pricing or case studies? (We use tools like RB2B, Leadfeeder, and Maximise.ai). ✅ Competitor research – Tools like Trigify.io reveal when prospects engage with competitor content. ✅ Event attendance – Webinar attendees or industry event participants often explore new solutions. (DM me for a Clay template on this) ✅ Job changes – Platforms like UserGems 💎 notify us when decision-makers start new roles (a prime buying window). ⚡️ Pro Tip: Categorize triggers: → High intent: Pricing page visits → Medium intent: Engaging with case studies This helps prioritize outreach for faster conversions. Step 2️⃣ Layer Intent Data with an ICP Filter Intent data alone isn't enough, you need to ensure the right audience fit. Tools like Clay and Clearbit help us: ✅ Confirm ICP fit using firmographics ✅ Identify the right decision-makers ✅ Validate work emails ✅ Enrich data for personalized messaging ⚡️ Key Insight: Not everyone showing intent fits your ICP. Filter carefully to avoid wasted resources. Step 3️⃣ Hyper-Personalized Outreach Golden Rule: Intent without context is meaningless. Here’s our outreach formula: 👀 Observation: Reference the trigger (e.g., webinar attended, pricing page visit) 📈 Insight: Address a potential pain point tied to that trigger 💡 Solution: Share how you’ve helped similar companies solve this pain 📞 CTA: Suggest an exploratory call or share a free resource ⚡️ Pro Tip: Use tools like Twain to personalize at scale without landing in spam folders. 📊 The Results? Since focusing on intent-based outreach, we’ve seen: ✅ 3x Higher Demo Booking Rates 📈 ✅ 40% Reduction in CPL (focusing on quality over quantity) ✅ Larger Deals in the Pipeline with higher-quality prospects It’s 2025. Let’s build smarter, more profitable campaigns. 💡 Do you use intent signals in your outreach? Drop me a comment below! 👇

The days of "I noticed you like Guinness!" personalization are dead. Here's how top sales teams are identifying specific pain points their solution can uniquely solve. After building Apollo's AI research agent from zero to thousands of users, I've seen what separates good prospecting from great - and it's not what most people think. The Old Way: Generic Filters & Surface-Level Personalization - Start with basic filters: job titles, industry, company size - Download list, manually research each prospect - Find something generic to mention ("saw you went to Stanford!") - Send bland outreach with superficial personalization - Hope for 1-2% response rates while burning through your TAM The New Way: AI-Powered Pain Point Identification 1. Multi-source data enrichment: Configure multiple data sources in one place to maximize contact accuracy. For example, set up a waterfall enrichment that tries several email and phone providers in sequence to find valid contact information before your first touchpoint. This significantly increases your reach rate without wasting time on bounces. 2. AI qualification for genuine pain points: Create natural language prompts that identify prospects with problems you can solve. For a localization company, this means scanning websites for translation gaps. One prospect had a product supporting 30+ languages but maintained an English-only website – a perfect opportunity to start a value-driven conversation about expanding their web presence. 3. Signal stacking for personalized outreach: Combine multiple signals in priority order to craft messages that address specific pain points. Look for companies showing international expansion signals alongside their existing language limitations. One prospect was expanding overseas but only offered English language support – a clear opportunity to help them scale localization for customer acquisition in new markets. The result? Instead of "Hope this email finds you well," you can send: "We noticed you support 14+ languages in your product, but your website is only in English. Are you looking to expand your website to better service your international users?" The best part? You can do all of this inside Apollo.io - from initial prospect search to multi-source enrichment to AI custom research to signal stacking to AI messaging - in just a few clicks. Check out the demo to see how easily you can transform your outreach from generic to genuinely valuable.

Outbound is dead in cyber. Long live AE-owned prospecting. I will die on the hill of "outbound is dead". But it's been misunderstood when I've brought it up here. In cybersecurity, generic mass outreach is dying or it's a zombie waiting to be whacked. Targeted, value-driven prospecting led by Account Executives is thriving. SDR's have a hard time doing this not because they can't, but because the system is not setup for them to do it (i.e. comp plans, org structures, etc.) We know from research that personalized outreach based on deep account knowledge delivers 3x better engagement than templated SDR approaches. Yet we keep trying to build outbound motions with higher volume and worse conversion rates 🤮 Here's my framework for building a repeatable pipeline development program where AEs actually own the process: 👉 *The Value Hypothesis Approach* 1. Narrow the focus dramatically: Your target account list should be small enough that each account gets hours of dedicated research. 2. Make AEs accountable for contact mapping They need to identify key stakeholders and understand the organizational dynamics before any outreach begins. 3. Develop specific value hypotheses This is the game-changer. Each account gets 2 customized value proposition based on their specific situation. 4. Collaborate on hypothesis refinement The best teams involve SE/PreSales, Product Management, and Sales Leadership in critiquing and improving these hypotheses. 5. Execute with precision With this foundation, outreach becomes a targeted conversation rather than a generic pitch. 6. Close the feedback loop: Sales leaders need to document which value hypotheses resonated and which fell flat - this becomes your competitive advantage. The best-performing enterprise sales teams allocate at least 1/3 of AE time to this process. Yes, it's resource-intensive, but the results speak for themselves. 2 hours a day (minimum) every day, every AE, for 3 months. Then come back and tell me 'thank you' Unexpected benefit: When AEs spend 10+ hours weekly on strategic prospecting, your inbound and partner-led conversion rates automatically improve. Why? No AE will let warm leads slip after experiencing how much work cold prospecting takes. Pro-tip? Spend 'Training Thursdays' evaluating value hypothesis together. Double pro-tip, combine Value Hypotheiss with 'Show me You Know Me' on your messaging (follow Samantha McKenna - She crushes SMYKM content) Anyone here that calls value hypothesis something else? I used to call it my 'angle'. Need something more catchy and less scientific-sounding 😆

We've set up dozens of ABM programs. Of every component we ship, awareness scoring is my favorite.  5 stages, all auto-updated by workflows in your CRM: 1. Identified 2. Aware 3. Interested 4. Evaluating 5. Selecting The first and last are fixed: - Identified = on your TAL, no engagement yet - Selecting = open deal in your CRM The middle 3 are yours to customize. You define the end conditions for each stage based on your business, your motion, and the signals you want to track. Here are some of the variables worth considering in your model: 🟡 Aware • Website visit in the last 30 days • 1+ engagement on social content • Intro call from investors • Newsletter signup • Low-level ad impression 🟠 Interested • 2+ contacts connected with co-founders • Attended a low-intent event • Member of your community • Repeat website visits • Content download 🟢 Evaluating • Trial start • High-intent webpage visit (pricing, comparison) • Positive outbound reply • LinkedIn ad engagement • Event attendance • Webinar attendance The criteria you choose will dictate which tools you’d need. Some of the most common ones: Fibbler, Jungler, RB2B, HubSpot, Clay For each signal, you set 3 things: - Recency (e.g. last 30 days) - Threshold (e.g. 3+ opens, 50+ impressions, 2+ clicks) - Stage priority (higher stage wins if criteria overlap) And accounts move both ways. (if activity drops below threshold or the time window expires, the account falls back to a lower stage) To set this up in HubSpot, you’d need: - One list (segment) per stage with enrollment criteria - A custom "Awareness Stage" property on the Company object - Workflows that update the property when accounts enter/exit lists From there, each stage triggers a different play: - Identified & Aware → marketing pushes more ads and content - Interested → SDR starts personalized touchpoints - Evaluating → AE gets involved - Selecting → full sales motion ___ This is the best methodology we've found to ACTUALLY get reps to use RevOps systems. Unlike most things RevOps ships, reps LOVE this one.

Founders who use the spray-and-pray approach emailing and applying to every angel and VC they can find actively harms their chances. Here's my simple advice… Spend 10-15 minutes researching before you hit send. That's it. The most successful cold outreach follows this formula: • Show you understand our investment thesis (Louisiana economic impact, pre-seed & seed) • Keep it brief - make sure your message can be scanned in 30 seconds or less • Be clear about why you fit the investors thesis and what you're looking to raise What works: 1) A couple sentences on who you are and why it fits our portfolio 2) Focus on key metrics that matter the investor 3) Specific mention of how you discovered us (shows you did homework)] What doesn't work: • 6-paragraph emails that require scrolling • Spray-and-pray approaches to every VC on LinkedIn • Pitching something outside our scope • Excessive follow-ups that signal desperation This basic research isn't difficult, too many founders skip it: Check the fund's geography (if you're in Libya, don't approach a Louisiana impact VC), verify if the fund has already invested in your direct competitor and confirm your stage aligns. Consider these alternatives: - A warm intro from a genuine connection (not someone I met once at a conference) - Apply through our website form, which guarantees at least 10 minutes of our attention - Engage meaningfully on content before pitching (shows you understand our thinking) Even small funds get hundreds of messages. Founders who approach us with targeted, concise outreach stand out immediately. If you comment below the problem your startup solves, and where, I’d be happy to point you in the direction of some funds who might be a fit.

How it started: 4,000 cold emails sent. 1 lead generated. How it’s going: $4M+ ARR. Top 1% Agency Award. 30-person team. 6 lessons that turned my outreach campaigns from crickets to conversions: 1/ The list is the strategy Putting your message in front of the right person matters more than anything else. Many spend little time building their lead list, and a lot of time figuring out what to say. Do the opposite. Hint: You want to identify people/companies struggling with a problem you can solve. For example, we ran campaigns for an HR SaaS that helped with employee churn. We looked at Glassdoor reviews, and the average employee tenure. If employees stayed less than 18 months on average, + reviews were bad… we hypothesized the companies were a fit. 2/ Be as valuable as possible Most cold outreach try to get. “can I have 15 min of your time?” “can I pick your brain on… ?” But the best outreach gives. How to do that? Think about the first thing you would do for them if you signed them as clients. And do it already… for free. For example, I ran an outreach campaign targeting recruitment firms. I figured that the first thing I’d do for them, would be to build a list of Talent Acquisition Directors in companies hiring for 10+ roles. So I built the list. Sent it to them. Along with a tutorial of how I built it. It worked. 3/ Write for 1 person, then scale. Most try to build the biggest list possible and come up with a message that’ll appeal to everyone. But appealing to everyone = appealing to no one. When I start a new outreach campaign, I manually write 25 messages, 1 by 1, by looking at my prospect LinkedIn profiles. The beauty of doing it this way, is that you uncover patterns, that you can later on scale with the help of tech & AI. 4/ Fix your deliverability Good deliverability doesn’t guarantee you’ll succeed. But bad deliverability guarantees you’ll fail. Make sure to follow ‘best practices’ - < 50 emails per day per mailbox - SPF, DKIM, DMARC Setup - No open rate tracking - Secondary domains - Email warm-up … and send emails you’d want to receive. 5/ Pair cold email with other channels Cold email is a great channel to start with. It’s cheaper than paid ads, faster to get results than with content. But when you send cold emails, people check you out. Guess who’ll they trust more between your competitor who’s a ghost online vs. you who’s been posting valuable content on a consistent basis? 6/ Use the best Sales Software The outbound landscape keeps on changing. The best tools stay on top of the market, and ship new features constantly. In the cold email world, no one ships faster than Instantly.ai… (and I’m not saying that because they gave me this beautiful golden plaque, they’re simply the best) P.S: We wrote a 14-page guide that includes how our $4M ARR outbound agency books meetings using AI & Tech. Interested? Let me know below and I’ll make sure you get it :) P.S 2: Thanks Ada for the pic 📸

If I was a BDR or AE trying to break into my dream account, here's exactly what I'd do: I'd come up with an offer that made the buyer feel IRRESPONSIBLE for not taking the meeting with me. And I'd do this with a killer offer. This is the outbound datapoint everyone should be building their 2026/27 strategy around. Offers increase email reply rates by up to 28% (Gong) Offers are NOT: • A free demo • A gift card • A “meet and greet” They're tangible gives. Like a cart audit let's say if you sell an ecommerce solution. Dig through the checkout process and analyze: • Missed upsell opportunities • Broken processes • Lack of cart abandon follow up etc Here's how you can use offers to increase the effectiveness of your cold outreach: ✅ Offer #1 - Pitch The Blind Date Position who the buyer will be meeting with. I'd hype up the AE, sales engineer, or myself depending on my industry experience. Example: A client of ours sells an automated welding solution Example email CTA: "Our welding solutions engineer, Paul, is working with Hitch manufacturers like CURT to help overcome the welder shortage and produce consistent, high-quality welds. Interested in a quick intro?" ✅ Offer #2 - 1:Many Offers High-quality, reusable insights that feel tailored. Competitive benchmarks, industry research, or best practice guides. Example: We have a client that sells to a clinical ops solution. They surveyed dozens of clients in key areas around clinical trials. Example email CTA: "We ran a benchmarking analysis with a few of your peers like Ultromics and MEDRhythms to find avg. study start times, drop-out rates, insights on how they shorten build times. Interested in seeing how you stack up?" ✅ Offer #3 - 1:1 Offers These are custom-tailored experiences or resources created specifically for the prospect. This works best at the enterprise & strategic levels. Examples: - A cyber risk analysis - A benchmarking analysis - A workshop - A personalized audit of a website checkout flow. - Visiting and experiencing the brand firsthand, then sharing insights. - Offering free data, licenses, or pilots. Example: An EdTech rep would use language like this when reaching out to school districts "We compiled a report of how WCUS stacks up against the top schools in WA & OR. Free next week to run through the report together? Tom P.S. If nothing else, you’ll see how other PNW school districts are minimizing student inequity and achievement gaps to increase student readiness and graduation rates" ~~~ Offers are the future of outbound. It'll help your emails, calls, and DMs cut through the noise. What are you giving the buyer, that even if they decided not to buy your solution, makes the time they spend with you worthwhile?

Everything I know about B2B multichannel outreach.   The mindset: → You're interrupting someone's day. Earn it. → Relevance beats volume. Every time. → No is not failure. Wrong timing is.   The list: → Smaller and more targeted beats big and generic → Trigger signals beat cold assumptions → Your best 10 customers are your real ICP   The message: → Lead with their problem, not your product → Under 80 words for cold email. Always. → One CTA. Never two.   The sequence: → 6–8 touches over 3 weeks minimum → LinkedIn + email = 3x the result of either alone → Every follow-up must add something new   The mindset (again, because it matters most): → You're building relationships, not harvesting contacts → The best pipeline is one that comes to you → Content + outreach together is the unfair advantage 40 days. 21 posts. Still learning.   If this helped, follow for one post every 2 days. No recycled advice. No AI fluff. Just what works.   Share this with one person on your team who needs it today. #B2BSales #ColdOutreach #SalesStrategy #MultichannelMarketing #LinkedInSales

Good outreach: 1. Choose the right company 2. Choose the right contact 3. Choose the right timing 4. Write a decent message Great outreach: 1. Choose the right company 2. Choose the right contact 3. Choose the right timing 4. Write a decent message 5. Choose the right "Messenger" to reach out. Here’s what 99% of people miss: Your prospects don’t want to talk to SDRs. Especially if you're selling to technical roles like: CISOs, CIOs, CTOs, CFOs, CPOs... and other execs who don’t sit under GTM. The best email on the planet won’t do anything if it’s never opened… And even if it does most prospects are extremely hesitant to jump on a call with SDRs/AEs. This means outbound can’t be an AE/SDR-only game. It’s a team sport. it’s about putting the right person in front of the prospect. - Proximity - Seniority - Expertise - Job title - Mutual connections Those factors matter. Sales leaders should build plays that enable cross-functional collaboration. Reps needs the ability to involve the right people seamlessly. and that needs to be by design. The future is collaboration, and companies that figure this out... They’ll be the ones winning.