How to Build Killer Lists for Outbound Prospecting

I see a lot of talk about how tech stack is so important in outbound now. Opinions from thought leaders that companies should be spending $3,000 per month per rep on tools, otherwise forget about it, you cant compete.

Bollocks.

There are three broad components in every outbound sequence/campaign.

1. Target: The list of individuals you’re reaching out to.

1. Message: The scripts and templates your target is going to see/hear.

1. Process: How you deliver the messages to the target.

One thing I want to make very clear. This list is created in order of importance. Target comes first above everything else.

With poor targeting, I don’t care how good your messaging is or how much you spend on your tech stack to deliver these messages. You won’t get any cut through because you’ll be speaking to the wrong people through the wrong channels.

So how do we get targeting right?

Well we need to think about the list that we’re building as being a list of individuals, not a group of people that fit an Ideal Client Profile (“ICP”).

Yes, understanding ICPs are important, but that’s just the first step.

Here’s a breakdown.

Step 1: Understand your ICPs - there is plenty of information on how to define these (including our take on ICPs here). But in short, you want a few descriptors like:

Title:  CFO, Head of Finance, Head of Accounts Receivable

Industry:  Manufacturing, Wholesale and Distribution

Location:  United States

Company Size:  5000+ employees

Step 2:  Run a search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find individuals that fit this profile. Why do this when you can just download a list off of ZoomInfo or SalesIntel? Because LinkedIn has much more accurate and up to date information (for most personas) regarding their current employer and their job title. No point getting contact information for a CFO who no longer works in the industry you sell to.

Step 3:  Take down all of the information you can from LinkedIn Sales Navigator including:

• Name
• Company Name
• Employee Count
• LinkedIn URL
• Industry
• Company LinkedIn URL
• Company Website
• Company Phone Number
• Corporate Address
• Personal Phone Number (if available)
• Personal Email (if available)
• Have they posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days?

Step 4:  Augment this data using multiple b2b data sources (no one source has it all). We use:

• SalesIntel
• Lusha
• Seamless.ai
• Hunter.io

Step 5:  Verify that the email addresses you have are valid (not “catch alls” or spam traps) for this we use Zero Bounce.

Step 6:  Human verify whether or not you can reach the contacts on the numbers you’ve found. This means dialing the numbers before you give them to your reps (we can help here - just email matt@salesscience.co.nz and we’ll do it for you).

Now you have your targeting dialed in.

Now you can focus on Message and then process (which we’ll get into in the next 2 posts). Stay tuned for those.

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