Outbound is hard. Agree. But it can be easy.

I know a company who had their best outbound qtr in a year. How?

They did outbound the right way. The patient way.

I was talking to the folks at AK Operations a few months back.

They reinforced what my mentor Marylou Tyler told me years ago.

Most people conflate (mix together) outbound and cold outreach.

VERY DIFFERENT.

Most companies say they are doing outbound, they aren't.

They are doing cold outreach, which sucks.

When someone says, “Outbound is dead,” they usually don’t mean that.

What they mean is “Cold outreach is dead.”

Cold outreach = emailing strangers who aren’t familiar with you.

Outbound = contacting warmed up people who show signs of interest.

When I started sequencing folks, cold outreach still worked.

I'd send 100 emails to TOTAL STRANGERS.

They had no clue who I was, or what I did.

Hit on a problem they had → 10-15 replies, positive replies, meetings.

That was more than 10 years ago.

Send 100 cold outbound emails today → maybe book 1 meetings.

But, teams like AKOPs are getting reply rates of 6%+.

How?

They understand the diff between cold outreach and outbound.

They refuse to do (or let their clients talk them into) cold outreach.

It sucks. It doesn’t work.

Instead, they work hard to get their clients to do outbound the right way.

They spend a quarter warming up prospects they want to outbound to.

Great content - check.
No CTAs - check.
Patience - check, in truckloads.
Value every touch - check.
Opinions and ideas - check.
Special content pieces - check.
Extreme personalization - check.
Warming up the prospect for outbound so it’s not cold outreach - BOOM!

Want to really set up an amazing n8n or Clay workflow to go outbound?

Then, you need to nurture (old school term that has been done so poorly it’s got a bad reputation) cold prospects so that you can outbound to them.

Your first sequence to a prospect in tools like lemlist is a meat thermometer.

Stick it in their world and let it sit for a second.

It’ll tell you if they are ready or not.

If not, let that burger (prospect) sit on the grill a bit longer.

Don’t take it off until it’s deliciously medium rare.

Then, you start outbounding.

Asking for a meeting with your first email is like eating a raw burger.

Gross. For you AND your prospect.

That first sequence needs to create signals.

Get enough signals and you know the prospect is out of the “cold outreach” phase and ready to be “outbounded” to.

Thick, juicy, yummy burgers (or dried meats)…that’s what outbound is like eating.

Once you start, you’ll never stop. You’ll get fat and happy!