Cold outreach that actually works

Howdy Girdleyworld! 

Today we’re talking cold outreach.

Some people love it. Other people are sane. 

But like it or not, it’s an essential part of growing a business. Personally, I hate doing cold outreach — but by spending some time to figure out the principles, I at least know what I’m doing.

Now you will too. 

The 6 principles of effective outreach

1. Meet your audience where they’re at. 

The lazy assumption is that all cold outreach is email-based. But it’s absolutely not the case. 

Sure, Boomers and Gen X are definitely checking their emails. But younger people might live by text messages or social media — which totally changes your strategy. 

You can spend all the time and money in the world, but if you’re dumping it into a channel your customers don’t use, it’s all down the drain.

2. Use the scientific method.

If you’re running high volume outreach, you need to be smart about it. 

It’s the same thing you learned in high school: make a hypothesis, then test it. 

If you’re running email campaigns, make sure you’re experimenting with A/B subject lines, send times, messaging — any variable that might make a difference. 

(I’ll save you one experiment: short, custom messages always work better than long copy-pastes.)

I’ve run experiments that totally surprised me. One of my most successful campaigns was literally just, “Dear Jim, would you like to talk about selling your business? If so, let me know.” The subject line was just the business name. It worked great.

Which leads us to…

3. Offer an easy yes. 

Nobody’s going to sell their business based on one cold contact. So all you’re trying to do is start a conversation. 

“Do you want to talk about selling your business” is a pretty easy ask. You’re not burying them with details. 

If they are interested in selling, it’s easy for them to take the next step. (If they’re not, you don’t want to hear from them anyway.)

4. Custom vs generic messaging

Let’s be real: customized outreach outperforms generic outreach. 

But if you’ve got a giant list, you might not have the time or resources to customized tens of thousands of messages.

So how do you decide what to do?

You could send 1000 generic emails that get a 1% open rate. That gives you 10 opens.

Alternatively, you could send 20 emails that get a 50% open rate. That nets you the same 10 opens.

The way I think about it: if you’re able to play a big numbers game, and you have 10,000 good leads, you can probably get away with a pretty generic email.

But if your market is small, you can’t afford to burn all those leads, and it’s better to take the time and customize. 

(And yes, AI can help with bulk customization — but we’ll come back to that at the end.)

5. The 6th Contact Rule

Some people write one email and expect that’s going to be it. But you might do your research and craft the greatest outreach ever seen… and still get zero responses.

Don’t give up. You have to keep after people. 

But don’t keep resending the same thing. Try new angles, run new experiments, set up recurring sequences. Test everything.

The 6th contact rule says that you won’t even get an answer until the 6th time you cross someone’s desk.

But why should they respond at all? Well, because you…

6. Give people value

The best way to get a response is to give people value. 

You could send a study, an update on events in their market, a tax structure that would directly benefit them… something that’s timely and relevant to the stuff they DO pay attention to.

As you run your search, you might find ways to create new value. Maybe you say, “Hey, I’ve talked to 30 HVAC folks in the last few months, and here’s what they’re doing to recruit better techs.”

Give someone a reason for them to open your email. 

Solve a problem for them, and you’ll see responses. (This is one of the best reasons to start a newsletter!)

—

A few other notes

• Video messages are a great tool to stand out from the crowd. But you’ll need to give them a clear reason to hit play. You’ll also want to make it obvious from the thumbnail that this is a custom video. Showing their company name or logo is a pretty easy way to do that.

• AI tools are evolving so quickly I won’t try to recommend any. The challenge? Mass adoption is coming. So don’t assume just finding a great tool will give you an edge — how can you use it creatively?

• The best way to get people opening your outreach? Send it in a FedEx envelope. 100% open rate. I didn’t invent this trick, but I’ve sure as hell used it. 

3 things from this week

• Appetizer: If you want a deeper read on the “scientific method” approach to marketing, check out Gabriel Weinberg’s excellent book Traction — here’s my recap of the core idea.

• Main: Naming a new venture? Make sure it’s easy to say. Check out this study where people rated new companies on the stock market based on how easy they were to say. 👇 

(Read the whole article here, from my friend Alex’s excellent book summary newsletter — and subscribe for a list of his 100 favorite books!)

• Dessert: Body language says a lot. Do you agree? What tips you off?

Thanks for reading.

If you’ve got cold outreach tips, let me know!

Michael

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