B2B outreach - any tips, tricks or hacks to suggest?
Just started doing B2B cold email outreach to hosting companies, specifically those who offer shared and reseller cPanel hosting plans. I'm currently testing different subject lines and see what happens. I'm also using Linkedin to find and connect with C-suite members of hosting companies.
Does anybody have any experience doing this and can provide some valuable tips and tricks?
I do this for living right now. It is extremely hard and the most under appreciated job in sales and most SaaS companies as a whole.
That said, your best bet is to find people who are already in circles with your prospects. For example, when you say hosting, I'm imagining event hosting. So I'll go with that. If you can find someone who provides service, say catering or some sort of logistics to a bunch of different hosts. Cultivate a relationship with them, use them as a referral engine, feed them leads that you get on your on, and, most importantly, PAY THEM!!
This is an example of a partnership channel. It is the best way to find prospects, get introductory meetings with them.
Sorry it's not a trick, but it's easier to get someone to do business for you if you're paying them.
Its part of the reason why so many sales guys are seen as scummy, its brutal unforgiving work and over time it can leave you frustrated and looking for shortcuts left right and centre.
Hi Adam, I was referring to web hosting companies but I get what you're saying. Yes, I have already identified companies in my field to approach to do that. That's how I hope to scale.
I found the book Lean B2B very helpful. Funny enough, I think the author @indieorbust might be from Montreal as well.
Remember that even in business sales you're still dealing with people and people buy from the people they actually like. It is also an extremely long sales process; sometimes a year or more so you'll need patience and to foster those relationships over time.
Building on the Lean Startup book concepts, it's a good idea to identify all of the assumptions you have. Then work to confirm each of those. You don't have to have a product yet to just buy coffee for potential customers, hear about their problems in your niche, and validate a few of your assumptions. People like to talk about themselves, need to drink coffee sometime, and will share with you in exchange for a bit of your expertise for free.
Hope that helps,
Thanks for the shootout @Lakebed_io. I'm glad you found the content valuable. :-) And yeah, from Montreal as well. :-)
Salut Etienne :) you still living in MTL? We have an indiehackers meetup happening soon if you're interested. Will check out your book as well.
Great! :-) I'm actually travelling until June. I should be in town most of the summer. I'll definitely want to join a meetup and meet up.
Cool when the time comes join here https://www.meetup.com/Indie-Hackers-Montreal/
Great suggestion, i'll check out that book. I've onboarded several clients so far and will approach them about having a phone conversation with them and picking their brains. I've already gotten valuable feedback from the ones I on-boarded so far.
Hi Ishmael,
Are you doing completely cold emails to info@ sales@ addresses or are you using lead info tools to find named individuals in the companies?
When you are testing different subject lines, how big a sample size are you using at a time? 100 users? 200 users?
Are you using email deliver AND open tracking via SendGrid or another tool?
Since you've started doing this, how many prospects have you emailed?
Are you using a CRM to note who you have emailed and then who you need to follow up with? It takes between 7-13 interactions before a customer chooses to buy, instead of emailing new contacts, following up with the current can lead to bette rresults too.
I read the "7-13 interactions before a customer chooses to buy" somewhere as well and, being new to enterprise sales, that really surprised me.
Yah me too, I read 3-7 times. Either way, it's a lot more than I expeceted. But I understand, people are inundated with emails.
Its not just about emails, it is specifically about interactions, could be a phone call, a poster, an advert on digital/tv.
Good point...
So much money is left behind when sales does not do any follow up, it does not have to be enterprise sales, any form of B2B/B2C, expect to do follow up as a standard but the magic is figuring out when and how the follow up takes place.
The wrong methods create a bad taste towards your brand/product. You become a nuisance instead of an ally to solving a problem.
Yup, good point. I did get 2 people who responded and asked me to stop emailing them. So I removed them. You have to be polite but persistent. It's painful tho...
How often are you emailing them though? Timing is key, the right answer might be twice in the same week or once a month.
@breffni Once a week, until I get a response. It's only been 2 weeks now.
Hi @breffni
No, I am finding the personal email of the CEO/Owner/Founder/President and emailing them directly. I'm using Linkedin, Hunter.io and AnyMailFinder to find their emails.
I"m doing 10 at a time with different subject lines.
Yes, using SendGrid and AWS SES.
I've emailed ~300, but about half were to general emails (info@, sales@, etc). So I am going thru my list again and replacing those with the owner/founder/ceo/president emails. Out of the roughly 118 who opened the emails, 5 responded positively and so far 4 have installed my product. That was after 1 follow up email. This was my first email blast and it wasn't hyper targeted or optimized. Now I'm revising my strategy and I hope to get better results.
My plan is to politely follow up every week until I get a "no".
Ok so 300 sends, 118 opens, pretty good ratio so far.
10 at a time is not enough to track what is a good subject line.
Send 100 with one subject line
Send 100 with another
What got the most open rate? 10 is not enough to draw conclusions on data.
Don't just pick on the CEO/Owner they are most likely to have secretaries and filters, think about team leaders who would be part of choosing your solution.
Everyone wants to talk to the CEO about every product under the sun, have a think about how you can speak with other decision makers or people on the right team that would have say in your solution.
This subject line got a 31% open rate "Invitation to try Themely cPanel/WHM addon".
"Who should I talk to?" got a 21% open rate.
In my case the CTO or Sys Admin could be potential contacts for medium to large sized companies.
I sent an email blast to the people who didn't open the email and got a 19% open rate.
But as I mentioned, my initial list of 325 wasn't hyper targeted and optimized. So I'm going through each general email (info, sales, etc) and finding the personal email of the CEO or CTO.
Then I'll send another email blast.
I still don't think 10 is a big enough sample size, try 100 :)
Ok, I'll try that in the next email blast I send out. I've been watching a lot of videos by Alex Berman on Youtube which has also helped https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADRSVJ8T7Y8&list=PLtkcfOqeArMa9-nmJR8wxAOfSU4kzYpBj
Errrrr, right at the bottom of the video.
"For sponsorships you can reach us at: ABermanManagement@gmail.com"
Someone in marketing teaching how to reach Fortune 500 clients who can't afford their own domain?
Stick with the titans of the industry not the thought leader pretenders. HubSpot is one of them, X27 LLC, no one has heard of.
The cold email outreach works best when you have the right prospect to reach out to. Use good lead gen tools to target the right audience.
I found Ampliz SalesBuddy very helpful for my B2B outreach, check this out http://bit.ly/2sQgtzn
@Yashvanth Ampliz looks interesting, I just installed it. It keeps saying "Working to find your data" when I visit sites and click the icon, do you know what that's about?
Happened to me as well in the starting, I think it's a glitch. Use the Contextual Intelligence on a site that Ampliz works, it gives out custom and prioritized data.
I use a combination of LinkedIn + Hunter.io + Mixmax to do my outreach. Linkedin helps me find the people I need to speak with. Hunter.io helps me find the right emails and Mixmax lets me send emails that are trackable directly from Gmail.
Mixmax looks pretty cool. Will try it out. Question for you, have you ever had issues with having your emails land in the recipients spam box? Info I read somewhere said you may have to use a new domain if that happens.
I have not had any issues with this. I'm pretty sure that Mixmax sends email through Google's own servers.