Scaling thoughtfulness with email
We need a massive injection of empathy into the cold outreach industry.
1-minute 30-second read
I’m not an email outreach expert, but I have an opinion that is forming based on intuition, pragmatism, and qualitative and quantitative data from being on the front lines doing this work.
Here goes:
It’s beyond time that this stuff gets more thoughtful. We need a massive injection of empathy into the cold outreach industry. The advice being given on platforms like LinkedIn are mostly coming from people who, themselves, hate being on the receiving end of automated email sequences and delete almost every email they get from a stranger. This applies to both inside sales leaders and consultants.
What I think thoughtful looks like in practice:
Stop sending automated sequence blasts.
Become an intent master and set up high-intent signals that inform whom you reach out to and when you do it.
Scale down your outreach considerably to 3, 5, or 10 a day.
Spend way more time manually researching and writing copy. (Be a writer first, not a sender.)
Stop worrying about character counts and email length.
Only reach out to people who have shown a signal of being in-market.
I’ve been told that all of this is too much to ask of an SDR—and that most sellers, in general, don’t have the skill set and depth of industry knowledge necessary to make this level of intentionality work.
This leaves armies of under-skilled, impatient, stressed, and trigger-happy salespeople doing scaled cold outreach to ICPs that are most likely nowhere near in-market. (Sales’ purpose is to sell now. That means in-market and high-intent. Your sales reps should not be nurturing with their outreach. They should be trying to start buying conversations with people who are thinking about buying now.)
Cold outreach works. But all of this outbound hacking that’s being promoted is just a bunch of noise and excuses for continuing to spam people—because the alternative of patience, empathy, and intent is just too much to require.
If you can’t scale thoughtfulness, then what in the hell are you scaling?
That’s the question.
Additional context:
I think I’ve just always seen this differently because I’m a marketing guy who also does sales and outreach. Different lens. Different pace. Different expectations.
The purpose of this post is to hopefully inspire one person to do things differently. To follow their intuition. To write 250-word emails. To spend 15 (or 30) minutes researching a prospective buyer. To know that the time invested in doing this is worth it.
This is for sellers whose ACV is $10K plus. Products and services with less than a $10K ACV often require a different level of volume. That's an entirely separate conversation.
This is an opinion piece, it's not advice. If you want advice, email me. Happy to help if I know the context of your product and business.