Outbound Outreach for Early-Stage Startups: Templates

Outbound Outreach for Early Stage Startups: Tips to Skyrocket Your Sales

Outbound outreach is hard to perfect but easy to set up.

This is typically a method used only by B2B companies. But I believe there is potential in B2C as well. 

For example, a lot of the voices we feature on Cicero have LinkedIn. I’d find the people commenting and liking their LinkedIn posts and put them into an outbound sequence. 

The key to successful outbound outreach lies in prospecting. Focus on identifying the ideal persona that is most likely to trust you and become a customer.

If you’re unfamiliar with prospecting, I suggest starting with this Sales Prospecting Guide.

Lemlist also has a B2B sales prospecting: strategies, techniques & tools.

Ready to start with outbound outreach? 

Here are the Steps:

#1: Basic Email Domain Setup

The best practice is to set multiple domains and email addresses to send from. This is to prevent one domain from being marked as spam and ruining your sending capabilities. 

Check with mail-tester.com to make sure it’s working correctly. 

#2: Email Warmup:

Set up an email warmup if your email is new. You can use Lemlist, Reply.io, Instantly.ai, and Smartlead.

Otherwise, your emails will go to spam. 

#3: Get a lead-generation tool

Signup for Apollo.io. It can fulfill your Prospecting and Outreach needs for free. You can find people, names, and numbers using it. You can filter your heart’s desire to find the right people for you.

There are other tools for this also, like Hunter.io for prospecting and Lemlist or Instantly for sending. 

#4: Clean your Email list:

Make sure you are only emailing Verified emails. Sending to a bad list is a quick way to get marked as a spammer. You can also use NeverBounce or Bouncer to clean your list. 

#5: Build your Outreach Sequence: 

Be sure to use Email and LinkedIn, and consider cold calling. Your emails and LinkedIn messages should follow the framework in the screenshot below. 

#6: Ensure deliverability is good 

Use an app like GlockApps to see if emails are landing in inboxes. Or use Mail-tester.com again

#7: Follow the best practices below: 

• Sequence strategy: Ideally your sequences are 30-60 days long, include more than 10 steps (multiple email, call, and Linkedin outreach steps)

• • Consider other platforms you can cold outreach from. Is your audience on Instagram or Twitter? You can use tools like Phantombuster to do cold outreach to them

• Email best practices:

• • This (surprising) cold email CTA will help you book A LOT more meetings
  • 15 Effective Cold Email Templates
  • How To Write A Cold Email Which Gets Results w/ 30 Cold Email Examples

• Linkedin best practices:

• • Check out this Twitter Thread for advice on some best practices.
  • A Guide to Generating Leads on LinkedIn: Dracula Strategy

• Cold Calling

• • 55 Sales Tips & Techniques That Work Like an Absolute Charm in 2020

The KEY is to keep the message short, and not push too much for the sale. Be consultative and focused on solving their pain. Not selling your product or legitimizing your company.  

Outreach can be a great way to acquire users if you don’t have thousands to spend on ad campaigns

Try out different strategies, and channels, and figure out what works best for you. Double down on it. 

Hope it helps 🤙

P.S. I also launched my “Chaos Control Quiz” on Product Hunt, the biggest FREE launch that I’ve done so far.  

If you find the toolkit helpful or inspiring, please consider giving it an upvote on Product Hunt.

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Whenever you’re ready here are 3 ways I can help: 

1. Join me on a free 30 mins 1:1 consultation call focused around your business growth Book Here
2. Grab your copy to my No BS Startup Guide here
3. Follow my new startup Cicero.ly and start learning from the world’s biggest thinkers sign up here

Related startup guides

Use the startup guide to decide when outbound makes sense in your growth sequence. If you need a warmer acquisition channel, read the content marketing strategy. If your prospects are active on social, pair outbound with the LinkedIn strategy guide.