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.

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Connect with Ricky on LinkedIn.

Connect with Luigi on LinkedIn.

Join the Sales IQ Community here.

Get the Mindset eBook here.

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Learn to sell at your best in any buying environment. Explore the Create Pipeline course from Sales IQ Global here.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So like we really understand now and have developed this expertise around. how to, how to build that function well.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

This episode was digitally transcribed.