Every Touchpoint is a Sale

Small commitments lead to wins

Nov 15, 2023

Last week I covered some of the things working for me from an outreach perspective. The learnings, although not large data points, point to the fact that simple and less are always more.

If you’ve been following recent events, you’ll notice that email providers like Yahoo and Google are now clamping down on emails that don’t get a lot of engagement. This extends to sales platforms like Outreach and Salesloft.

Does this mean that volume is no longer a play?

No.

It does, however, mean that quality will be emphasized over quantity. Engagement and replies are now more heavily weighted.

Credit: Alex Vacca

Technical acumen will also be a necessity. Be it setting up domains, AI, or leveraging different avenues of communication to provide value.

It’s clear that buyers don’t want to give up their time unless there is a compelling reason to do so. This is in direct conflict with what any sales rep wants: a meeting. An opportunity to pitch your product.

So how do you modify your approach?

The principle that surfaced from last week’s learning is that taking the mindset of obtaining small commitments will eventually lead up to meetings, opportunities, and wins.

Every touchpoint is a sale.

All it takes is someone to agree to one small thing to open the door of intent and interest. By providing valuable info, be it a connection, resource, or personalized message, you can show why it’s valuable to meet.

In every interaction with a prospect, there is some type of give and get, even if it’s not dollars.

Meeting for time.
Demo for information.
POC for resources.
Product for dollars.
Terms for payment or vice versa.

Think about small asks that open up the door to conversation:

Woudl it be okay if I send over more info?
Does it make sense to send more resources?
Would you like a video to recap the work we’ve done with xyz?

This opens the door to conversation and leads to an opportunity to not only build a relationship, but begin a dialogue. The dialogue doesn’t need to happen in a face to face meeting in order for progress to happen.

Why does this work?

There isn’t a large commitment to make.

You don’t want to waste 30 minutes on on a meeting that isn’t helping you. No surprise that your prospects don’t either. But if you can ask them for 2 minutes of their time, all of a sudden that’s not that big of a lift.

I like using video not as a first touch, but after getting permission to showcase something specific and still provide info at a high level of who and how we help. A minute long video that can be viewed at your convenience is much simpler than carvingn out time in a packed calendar, not knowing if it’s even worth meeting.

Yes, there are elements of relevance and intent signals. I’ve covered this previously in buyer research and refining your ICP.

Jed Marhle’s current take on how the SDR model is broken lays out tactics which you can employ. Some of tactics he had mentioned gave me more ideas and helped connect the dots on what I already do today:

Connecting your executive team to senior level prospects to discuss industry or use cases
Connecting senior level customers to senior level prospects.
Connecting cross functional teams within large orgs with similar pains/ use cases.
Asking customers to speak at events or even fireside chats.
Asking customers to write or co auther a thought leadership piece.

This works. Even if it doesn’t achieve a meeting or a step forward, it certainly bring about a dialogue.

You’re leading with a lot of value that helps drive more engagement and ultimately a sale. The irony in all this?

It can be leveraged at any point of the sales cycle.

Be it a first touch, multi-threading, or trumpeting up to leadership. All this dependent on your ICP and sales motion, but nonetheless relevant adn applicable.

Is this scalable? Probably not.

Are there ways to do outreach in a scalable fashion? Of course.

Which brings me to other points that I discussed around AI and technical acumen worth highlighting.

Technical Proficiency

Beauty of SaaS put together two great resources on this:

Cold Email Checklist (Domains)
Cold Email Tech Stack (sending, lead scraping, data verification)

BowTiedDingo on not getting emails marked as spam:

Enhancing Cold Email Deliverability

I recently listened to an interesting podcast by John Barrows with episodes featuring Ryan Staley and Matt Buchalski on how AI will shape the sales rep. Worth the listen. A couple of things that play into relevance, engagement, and today’s topic:

AI will just help sellers be better at pointed messaging and driving better relationships
AI will help get rid of the mundane tasks but magnify the most important skill: critical thinking.

Even this recent post from Florin: