Cold Calling Strategies and Digital Outreach Techniques

Trick question. The real secret? You don’t pick one. The best reps, founders, and marketers don’t choose a channel, they orchestrate them. Here’s how the top 1% actually do it: 📞 1. Cold Calling: Best for high-ticket, high-stakes deals. Why it works: Instant feedback. Real-time objection handling. Hard to ignore when done right. Example: You’ve emailed a $50k ARR prospect twice. They opened but didn’t reply. Pick up the phone: “Hey, saw you opened our last note on [XYZ pain]. Thought I’d check if it’s relevant or just bad timing.” Boom. Personalized, timely, human. 📧 2. Cold Email: Your best bet for scale + authority. Why it works: It’s scalable. Decision-makers scan emails more than DMs. When well-written, it builds authority. Example: Instead of “just following up,” you write: “Hey [Name], Saw your recent post on [Topic]. Really resonated with your take on [pain]. We worked with [Competitor] to solve the exact same bottleneck and cut their churn by 18%. If it’s on your radar too, happy to send over the playbook. Best, [Your Name]” Clean. Clear. Helpful. 💼 3. LinkedIn Outreach: Slow burn. Big payoff. Why it works: Warms people up through content. Lets you build visibility before the pitch. Adds social proof to your name. Tactical Example: Someone liked your LinkedIn post about lead gen. You shoot them a message: “Hey [Name], Thanks for engaging with my post on outbound. Curious, are you exploring new strategies for [topic] or just browsing ideas? Either way, would love to stay in touch.” Now you’re not a stranger. You’re relevant. 🔄 So... which one should you use? ➡️ All three. Together. Intentionally. Here’s a flow: Cold email → they open but don’t reply → follow up with a call. They engage on LinkedIn → send a DM → follow up with a helpful email. They’re cold → connect and engage for 2 weeks → email with value → call after warm intro. The goal: Be seen. Be helpful. Then be invited in.

Cold outreach isn't rocket science. With the right processes in place, anybody can grow their business with cold outreach. Here's our cold outreach process from start to finish in 9 stages: We've used this to book 153,000 sales calls since 2019 (success leaves clues): 1. Identify a specific target audience. 2. Build a hyper-focused list in Sales Navigator using Boolean commands. 3. Craft a personalized message using insider language (words they use in their day-to-day). 4. Send a personalized connection request mentioning their interests: -> Name -> Location -> Job title 5. Follow up 24 hours after connecting with a greeting and a discovery question. (If they don't reply) 5.1. Follow up 3 days later by offering a valuable document. 5.2. Follow up 4 days later by sending the link to the document and politely signing out. 6. Answer any questions and continue the discovery process until you know if they have a problem you can solve. 7. Offer a solution to the problem and request a call to go through it in more detail. 8. Manually book the call via Calendly (dropping links reduces the percentage of calls booked). 9. Nurture the lead before the call with social proof and sales assets. That's my process. What's yours?

Most cold calls sound the same: “Hey, this is Josh we help companies do XYZ.” Click. Why? Pitching creates resistance. Why? Because solutions have no value without a problem. Try this instead: “When someone spends 6 minutes on your site but doesn’t fill out a form or book a demo, how do your reps follow up?” Now you’re not pitching. You’re illuminating a potential problem. Why it works: It makes people think. “Wait… yeah, what do we do when that happens?” You’re not calling them out. You’re helping them notice. That’s the move. Less pushing. More poking. You’re not there to convince. You’re there to shine a light. And when they see it? They might ask you to stick around.

I took a pretty different approach to cold calling. 😲 My goal was to get the prospect to give me an elevator pitch. I found that the sooner I stopped talking, the better the conversations went. This went against the training I’d received that encouraged me to get to my 30 second pitch as early and often as possible. I’d get through my cheeky opener – “This is a cold call. Want to hang up, or want to roll the dice?” – and then ask this question: 👀 “How much do you already know about Clari?” Three main buckets of responses: 1) Never heard of you; 2) Know what we do; 3) Wrong idea of what we do. If they’d never heard of us, I pivoted to asking about the systems or tech they use to solve the use cases we solve. Then go into some value props / differentiation. If they had a high level understanding, I tried to understand how (ex-customer, evaluated us at some point, spent time on our site, etc). Then go into some value props / differentiation, focused on what’s changed since they last had a look. If they had a wrong idea, I tried to understand why (mixing us up with another company, unclear messaging, etc). Then go into some value props / differentiation to set the record straight. One simple question led to countless great conversations. Give it a try! Or... let me know what your favorite cold call question is. #revenue #sales #sdr

Cold outreach isn't dead, it's actually a whole lot easier now than it used to be. You ever sit down and chat with an OG sales human? The effort they had to go through to get in front of another human is wild. Pre cell phones, pre email, it was drive a route, use pay phones and pagers, drop off items with the front desk human. Today, sales humans have unimaginable tools at their disposal. Which, I know, also means that buyers are getting inundated with stuff all the time. So why do I think it's easier? For one, the OG sales tactics actually stand out today. A little bit of hard work and creativity combined with a personal touch goes a million miles further today because it's so rare. Before I knew about The Sales Rebellion, I started to see this shift. Email was the new shiny toy when I started and the biggest crutch. So what did I do? 1) Send 7 minute cold call meeting invites instead of emails - 40% acceptance rate 2) Started my own website to drive web traffic. It was called https://lnkd.in/guVS9f-2 or something like that. 3) Began posting everyday on LinkedIn to learn, grow a network that I controlled, and take my learnings to provide value for others. 4) Used in person and direct mail to create experiences. I once FedEx'd a burner phone to Ray Toms when he was at Coors...I would use Preparation H Wipes and I'm sorry cards to send to people... 5) Show up in a lobby, treat the front desk human like a real human, be transparent about who I was and what I was doing there and who I wanted to speak to, and was walked back to see people almost 25% of the time. 6) Finally, perfected a brief cold phone call as well. Shied away from too many emails (still do) Direct mail, meeting invites, in person cold calls, kindness, honesty, creativity, consistency. All without a formalized CRM (for the most part) or call recording. The world of cold calling has always belonged to the creative and the focused. The honest and transparent. Not the person with the newest toys and software. Show up, provide value, and don't be afraid to have some fun. It's just sales for crying out loud!

Want to know why buyers avoid salespeople? It's because they're tired of being Pitch-Slapped. Salespeople continue to close the door on themselves with their cold outbound efforts. It starts with the cold call. Your prospect answers the phone, and in 30 seconds or less, you tell them who you are (they don't know, like, or trust you). The company you're with (no one cares), explain that you're calling them about an opportunity to (insert broad, non-specific value proposition that provides no real value like saving time, money, increasing efficiency, etc., here), and then beg for time on their calendar to discuss it further (because your message was much better than the last 50 people who said the exact same thing when they called). You've delivered little more than a commercial about you and your product. Here's a tip: People don't like commercials. In fact, in many cases, they pay to avoid them. In sales, we talk about differentiators all the time. Unfortunately, it ends with our products, process, user-friendliness, etc. We forget that the main differentiator is us. Products, features, and pricing don't win deals. People do. Want to differentiate yourself? Make your call to action an invitation for your prospect to tell their story. This requires doing your homework, learning about the prospect and their company, and being creative with your approach. Let's say you sell accounting software and notice that a particular company is getting a lot of negative customer reviews online about repeatedly billing them incorrectly. An empathetic approach might be well received in your cold outbound. Maybe something like this: Hello _______, my name is __________. We've never met, however, I've been seeing a lot of customer reviews online lately expressing concerns about your company repeatedly billing them incorrectly. Working for ________, I have solved many problems like this; I've learned that, in most cases, people inside the company are even more frustrated than their customers because of the continuing issues. I would like to know what you're experiencing, how you feel about it, and if there's any way I can help you. Your focus is squarely on them. You've empathized with their situation and stated that you are sure they feel horrible about the issue (real pain, emotional connection). You've expressed a genuine concern about understanding the scope of the problem (builds rapport and trust). And (here's the best part), your value proposition is that you (not your product) have fixed problems like this before. Be the differentiator and win more deals. #sales #makeprospectingsuckless

85 million cold emails taught us these 15 lessons 3 of these lessons are wildly counterintuitive. Thanks to Gong and 30 Minutes to President's Club for help with this one. The data supported these 12 common best practices: ✅ Email Length: 1) 50-100 words 2) 3-4 sentences This will only continue trending downward. Keep emails short and concise. ✅ Personalization: 3) Personalized emails have 5x the reply rate of non-personalized emails No-brainer here. Gotta personalize your emails. ✅ Messaging: 4) Buzzwords, AI, platform, ROI decrease reply rates by up to 57% Not convinced you should stop talking product? ✅ Call To Actions: 5) Asking for time reduces reply rates by 44%. Ironically, time is the worst thing to ask for in a cold email. ✅ Subject lines: 6) 1-4 words has the highest open rate 7) AI, buzzwords, numbers, and questions reduce open rates by up to 18% 8) All lowercase subject lines have 11% higher open rates Subject lines should emulate internal communication style. Make sure you look like a peer instead of a vendor. ✅ Multi-Channel: 10) Add voicemails + cold calls to increase reply rates by 3.24x Point voicemails to your emails. Use the phone to drive attention to email. ✅ Bump Emails: 11) Break-up emails increase reply rates by 89% 12) Case studies reduce reply rates by 47% Yes, bump emails work. And they work very well. 🚨 The Three Surprises These three lessons surprised us. 1) Reply rates are 41% lower without social proof You miss out on a ton of replies when you don't strategically name drop. 2) Offers outperform Interest-Based CTAs by 4x and increase reply rates by 28% You need to offer the prospect something in return for their time. An audit, an insight, talk up the SE, etc. 3) Use company personalization vs. individual personalization for Director+ roles. Reply rates are 50% higher (9% vs. 6%). Leaders do not care that you know where they went to school or know a personal interest of theirs. Everything should connect to the business's goals. ~~~ Data shows that in 2025, top reps book 8X more meetings than average reps. Want the full playbook on how they're doing that? Get our cold email course. To celebrate launch week, we're offering a discount (don't follow our negotiation advice 😂). Grab the course here: https://lnkd.in/e4dxyANg

Any great cold caller can be a great cold emailer... My top 4 cold caller --> emailer mindset shifts: 1) Remember the 1st question When you pick up the phone and call someone - the 1st question is always "who is this" The question for cold email is "what is this" Don't confuse the two. 2) Would you really say that? Read your cold email out loud... would you feel awkward reading it to your friends? Think about it like being at a conference. You've been dying to meet this person. Are you going to read that email out loud? Find your voice. Put those words to paper. 3) Write like you talk - then edit. We tend to speak in run on sentences. Chop them up. Each long sentence hurts reply rates by 17%. Kill the commas. Kill the big words. Choppy copy. 4) Conversation > Conversion "Sell the meeting" doesn't work if they haven't picked up the phone yet. Think of your cold email like trying to get them to pick up. The only goal is to get a reply. Starting a conversation will get you 2x as far as trying to book the call. *Bonus* 5: 1:1 > Volume Personalized emails are seeing 13x more replies. When the name of the game is getting someone to pick up the phone - it makes a ton of sense to "dial more" When you're trying to get someone to reply... the goal should be to write something that's worth responding to. My advice for this? Be very clear in answering why you're reaching out. Show your homework.

Cold outreach higher in an org is a popular move in most outbound playbooks 👀 But executing it wrong (how, who, when) has a high cost associated with it 😅 Some tips for all my outbound warriors getting pushed by their managers to reach out to C level folks at their key accounts: 1️⃣ *quality > quantity for emails to your non buyers* If you are reaching out to a 500+ EE company, the CXO is most likely an influencer in most purchases that may be involved in signing off on a product - but typically NOT an evaluator or direct buyer for 90% of tools out there. 🛑 (ofc exceptions may be if they download a white paper on your website but typically they’ll have a team that leads all tactical decisions) 2️⃣ *focus on the right content for the right contacts at the right time to build credibility* Example: Don’t ask for a meeting in the first cold email if you haven’t done any research or talked to anyone in their org yet. Don’t tell them what your product does and assume they care. Focus on learning about their company’s pain points through research (org set up, current stack, top challenges) and talking to their team first 🧐 Earn the right to make asks. 3️⃣ *reset your expectations and be human* The best case outcome: they will forward your email to the right contact on their end. Write your emails knowing this is the most likely outcome if you do it right. The name of the game is polite persistence with personalization. Be a person before being a salesperson ❤️ Becoming great at outbound can be a massive advantage. 💪 but remember it’s more art > science that requires thoughtful planning and execution. Don’t rely on stale automated sequences to maximize your inputs without the ‘special touch’ aka personalization 📞 Happy prospecting!!! ✌️ #sales #prospectingtips #outbound #personalization #customization

Ever get stuck with this cold call objection: "Sure, send me more info over email"? Me too. You send the email, and never hear back. Here's a more effective approach that gets you meetings: 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 1️⃣: 𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 / 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐥𝐮𝐟𝐟 Is this a brush-off or genuine interest? Try This: "Thanks for your time! I hear 'more info' sometimes when folks are politely saying no. But if you're genuinely interested in learning more, let me know!" 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 2️⃣: 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧 If they are genuinely interested, try understanding what you should focus on in the email. Try This: "Great! To make my email relevant what specific challenge are you facing? Is it more about {{pain point 1}} or {{pain point 2}}?" Get them talking again. 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 3️⃣: 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 Make sure your email gets seen. Try This: "I'll shoot you a quick email with some info in a few minutes. Can you do me a favor and reply with 'Got it' so I know it lands in your inbox?" 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 4️⃣: 𝐃𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐥 Most follow-up emails are long and boring. Use a tool like Sendspark to add a short, personalized video about the Pain Point from Step 2. Bonus points for their dynamic video feature that personalizes pre-made videos with names. 𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 5️⃣: 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐮𝐩 Add a reminder to follow up in 24-48 hours. People are busy, so following up is crucial. -- How do you handle the "send me more info over email" objection? Share them in the comments 👇 #sdr #sales #coldcall