Outreach Bullseye Template
Here’s a template that I use to help sellers visualise the challenge and opportunities they face in getting initial contact with their prospect.
One of the reasons I’ve always loved sales it is a creative profession. We have to think, to use our brains, to quickly assess the situation in front of us and readjust as necessary.
But with the rise of technology and automation we’ve stripped so much of that away from our sellers.
At some point, someone determined that sales was like painting by numbers. “If you just fill in these steps, complete these actions, then a deal will pop out of the end.”
And while consistency is helpful, great art comes from a blank piece of paper, using your imagination and bringing your experience to the table.
The first goal of an SDR or prospecting AE is to get someone to respond
The ultimate goal is closed revenue - but we can’t sell to someone that isn’t interacting, so we must first get them to speak to us.
The painting by numbers approach has SDRs across the world following the same processes - standardised emails, pattern interrupt calls, pitch slapping on LinkedIn.
The results are near zero responses to email sequences and frustration on the phone.
Instead, consider using this template to evaluate the different approaches to get in contact with a prospect.
Your SDRs or AEs can use this on their own, but it makes a great collaborative tool between the SDR, AE, Partner team, Execs and CSMs depending on the size of the opportunity.
Either have on a big screen, or I love to have it printed out and use Post-It Notes as part of the exercise.
Go around each of the outer-ring channels and ask yourself and your team - if we absolutely had to use this one channel to get in touch with this person, what would we do.
This is where your team start to bounce ideas around and get creative:
For mutual connections for example:
We could check is our CHRO has mutual connections with their CHRO
We could see if our CEO is part of any networking groups with their CEO
We could see if anyone in our sales team has a LinkedIn TeamLink connection
A sequence or cadence doesn’t inspire this kind of lateral thinking - just encouraging you to rewrite a phrase and hit send.
Work around the outer ring, developing ideas for each of the possible channels.
You should end up with an image like this
Now your SDR or AE can start to prioritise and build an approach that is relevant, personalised and much more likely to gain a response.
A couple of comments on the three common channels:
Emails
Most SDR/AE outreach is an ask “Can I have time/meetings/money”. Instead think about what you can give to your prospect.
Knowing what you know about their role, their company, their industry - can you provide them with a useful tool or template that is genuinely useful to them?
That drives responses.
Social networks are social, so resist the urge to connect and immediately pitch. Build your list of target personas and click the notification bell on their profile. Every time they post you’ll be alerted and can thoughtfully engage.
This helps build familiarity, but more importantly you’ll learn what is important to that person.
Phone
The phone has always been, and will always be, the best way to get immediate feedback from someone.
Of course it can be difficult to get hold of the right contact details, and some people don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t know.
But I like to think of phone prospecting as a game of crazy golf. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to aim straight at the pin - you need to aim off to the side and get bounced back towards the target.
So consider who the people are that are not your target persona, but might be easier to get in touch with and can refer you in to the right person.
My SDRs don’t have time for this!
If your SDRs are focused on smaller higher volume accounts then you may well receive push back that they don’t have time for this level of thinking.
Results over activity - there is no point being highly active if you don’t get customers to speak to you. There are no prizes for the number of bad emails your SDRs send - refocus them on the main goal - closed revenue.
Learning compounds - as your SDRs do more of this deep thinking for one prospect, it will come more naturally to them for future prospects. This is just a tool to help them develop the muscle, and once they see better results they’ll automatically incorporate it into their way of working.
Get planning
So there you have the outreach bullseye template - a simple framework for thinking through how you can approach your target prospects.