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| ISSUE №160 · SALES | OUTREACH |
Cold Outreach Shouldn't Be the Inbox Scourge That It Is
I really like cold email as an acquisition channel. I don't do it quite so much anymore, because it's gotten harder and harder to actually land where you need to land. Over the past couple of years, the leads it produced for me were lower quality than the ones I get from content or from this newsletter.
I've never really liked LinkedIn DMs either. The way they get used most often isn't genuine, in my experience. The vast majority of connection requests and DMs I get are a prelude to a pitch.
A crazy amount of time, energy, money, and technology has gone into building a solution that rests on the initial falsehood of actual interest in creating a relationship and doing research. But some people have decided that using automated & AI-flavored tools of d-baggery is a replacement for sending really good communication to another human being.
For instance, here's what landed in my inbox just this morning:
"Hi Tim, Your discovery call prep framework is gold — especially the part about picking ONE thing to dig into rather than spraying questions. Most reps never learn that.
Quick question — for the agency owners you coach, what's the biggest outbound infrastructure mistake you see them making repeatedly?"
Starts Off Strong & The D-Bag Nature of AI Spam Takes Over
It's super clear to me that this is completely AI-written, and I've got some big honkin’ issues with that, honestly. I don't love it at all. I think English might be new and exciting for this person, so I'm not going to harp on it.
I'd just gotten home after dropping my son off at work and, like so many of us, I sat in the driveway for a second relishing the total lack of demands on me. I read the message and almost let it go. I almost didn't respond. But I couldn't help myself. Here's what I sent back, word for word:
"I don't know, because I don't coach them on outbound infrastructure. I coach them on understanding their prospects, clients, and the market they serve. I want them to focus first on creating demand through content, and using that to inform a razor-sharp positioning edge. Only then would I suggest they invest in a ton of outbound, so I don't get into infrastructure at all.
Here's a tip for you. Obviously you're connecting with me because you want me to refer you to my clients. You're doing that by referencing a post - for a minute, the ego stroke almost had me blushing. Then you took a hard left turn by asking me an unrelated question.
You could do a lot better by sharing your own thoughts. Comment on the post. Show me you understand the things I'm talking about, instead of turning this into a fairly bullshit, I-want-to-make-a-sale kind of outreach.
It would've been better if you'd said, 'Hey Tim, I loved your post about discovery calls, and we both know one way a lot of agency owners book those calls is through cold email. Here's a great resource on cold email infrastructure that I think you could share with your clients.'
That's giving me something valuable, instead of asking me an unrelated question and hoping I hand you a benefit.
Give before you ask. And if you're going to go through the pretense of using my content to ingratiate yourself, focus on showing me you could help my clients, instead of pushing me straight toward a relationship where I trade on my clients' trust in me to benefit you.
Does that make sense? I know this was a big response, but you're doing about 10% of the work, and that's admirable. Do more, and you'll get more."
I wanted to be a lot angrier than that. But I held back - it was so peaceful there in my driveway that I thought maybe we could turn this lemon into some lemonade. Maybe it was a moment where the guy could learn something - you never know. He probably didn't. But maybe you can.
Here's what that DM gets wrong:
He did 10% of the work and wanted 100% of the payoff.
That's the whole freakin' gross cold outreach disease in a single message.
In some ways, it's worse than a disease. Every virus or bacteria is just trying to live their best life, and sometimes that means that you get sick. But the disease doesn't know that it's taking your health away from you.
But when you send cold outreach, you might be stealing something from the reader.
Attention is the actual price your reader pays. Every email you send asks a busy human to spend a little of they are all too scarce attention on you. Most outreach takes that attention and gives nothing of value back. most cold messaging leaves the recipient a little weaker, a little more time-starved, and probably a little pissed off…
Stop stealing attention. Fix the ratio. Give first.
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Tim's Rules for Outreach
1. You Are An Interloper. Nobody asked for your email to show up in their inbox. Your primary job is to EARN YOUR SPOT in front of your reader's eyeballs.
2. Relevance Is Reality. Your email has to be immediately relevant to the person reading it. That means you'd better know who they are and what they think about all day, or you're just wasting precious pixels. This is where signals come in…you know, social activity, site visits, hiring activity, news events, etc. There is an enormous industry built around these signals. Unfortunately a lot of the easy to see signals, like hiring, are weak evidence of intent, but they at least give you something to anchor your relevance around.
3. Timing Matters. Even if you nail relevance, most people who get your email won't care because the problem isn't on fire, or they're under contract, or they've got 140,000 things that matter more than you today. So don't push on the faux urgency or limited time offer bullshit. If they are not interested, they are not fucking interested.
4. You Need A Trigger. There has to be a real reason you're reaching out, and not total bullshit reasons like "Noticed you are interested in..." or "Saw you are connected to..." Something has to have actually happened. The event of you wanting to make a sale doesn't count. Think proprietary data, an event, or a synopsis of data. I get plenty of interest from agency leaders when I ship one of my Agency Research breakdowns, or offer an Agency Growth Playbook like my Cold Email Playbook as upfront value.
5. It Is Not About You. Years ago, cold email success was about your offer. What were you promising? Today it's about insight, value, and respect. If more than about 25% of the words in your email are about who you are and what you do, you've got the ratio backwards. Make it all about the recipient, and you are just the NPC that adds value. You aren’t the hero of this story, so leave the main character energy at home
6. It Is A Numbers Game, Just Not The One You Think. Every early-stage agency owner wants to know how to send a thousand or ten thousand emails a day. That's the wrong game. The right game is taking a list of 5,000 and whittling it down to the 1,000 you're genuinely best suited to help. The more people you send a message to, the less relevant it is to any one of them. Squeeze the list until there's no juice left and all that remains is the people you actually fit.
7. Get To The Point. I know I ramble. I blame my mom for telling me I was smart too often. But cold outreach has to be edited to the bone. Every word earns its place, and every word has to make me want to read the next one. You've got 150, maybe 200 words before someone stops reading. By the end, I should know exactly what you do, how it helps me, and what to do next.
8. Don’t Be FUCKING Boring. This sounds silly, but if your email isn't fun or interesting or a little challenging, WTF would I read it? You're trying to grab the attention of someone who doesn't want to give it to you, so you've got to be notable. Tell a story, take a contrarian swing, be funny, something. A 147-word march to "Can we book a call?" books very few calls.
9. Don’t Ask. Give. About 137% of the cold emails I get end with "Can we hop on a call?" or "Let's grab 15 minutes." Nobody has time to jump on a call after one email. Moreover, you haven't earned the right to ask yet. Give something instead send proprietary research, an invitation to an event, or a webinar, invite them to be on a panel of some sort - ANYTHING. It doesn't matter what, as long as your reader gets something real for the attention you're asking them to spend. Seriously, that shit ain't free.
10. Don’t Be Creepy. One of my Agency Studio clients had never sent a cold email before. We talked about doing real research, understanding what the prospect is responsible for and what they might need. They did research that was maybe a little too exhaustive. They noticed the prospect had just posted new baby photos on Instagram. So they pulled one of the baby pictures into the email and wrote, "Your baby is so cute," before launching into the pitch. I just couldn't believe that, so remember, research is good, creepy stalking generates a restraining order. Know the difference.
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OK - Let’s Bring This Baby Home
Send the outreach you'd actually want to get.
Remember that a real, busy human is on the other end, with a hundred thousand things to think about that aren't you. If you're going to interrupt them, make it worth their time and your effort. Don't be lazy. Don't be sleazy. Never be disingenuous.
Your outreach is a tiny public record of how you treat people when there's nothing in it for you. The LinkedIn DM guy told me exactly who he was in four sentences. Every email you send does the same thing about you.
Send the one you'd be proud to have read back to you.
And don’t be a d-bag.
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