pitching every midsize business in america (for fun and profit) (anand kukarni, co-founder,...

Pitching Every Small & Midsize Business in America (for fun… and profit)

Anand Kulkarni Co-founderLeadGenius @leadgenius

Who’s talking?

• Co-founder / Prez

LeadGenius.com

• Ran sales at LeadGenius

for 4 years, with a network

of 500 virtual SDRs

• ex-PhD from Berkeley, NSF Fellow

LeadGenius software manages outbound / account-based sales for fast-growth companies:

• building lists of target accounts

• mapping decision

makers at accounts

• launching customized

prospecting email from

sales reps

The inside view on lead generation and outbound processes.

• I’ve had an inside look at how

dozens of companies have set

up their outbound sales

processes.

• Both startups and enterprises • 1-person operations to 500-

SDR powerhouses

• We eat our own dogfood!

Today’s Story

• In 2013, one of our customers approached me with a

special request: to find and pitch (almost) every small

and midsize business in America.

Today’s Story

• In 2013, one of our customers approached me with a

special request: to find and pitch (almost) every small

and midsize business in America.

• This is how I did it.

What I’ll share with you today:


• Tales of how we helped a

customer identify and pitch

every small and midsize

business in America!


• Tales of how we helped a

customer identify and pitch

every small and midsize

business in America!

• How you can try these neat

tricks at home inside your

own organization!

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The Motivation

Why try to pitch

everyone in the

country?

Why Pitch Everyone?

The Motivation

The Answer:

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“Once you’ve found product-market fit,the only acceptable limits on your sales growth are:

* How fast you can hire top talent. * How fast you can fill your funnel with leads.”

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“Once you’ve found product-market fit,the only acceptable limits on your sales growth are:

* How fast you can hire top talent. * How fast you can fill your funnel with leads.”

— Parker Conrad, Zenefits Fastest-growing SAAS company of all time.

The way “filling your funnel” with SMBs used to work:

• Marketing buys a giant list of

names, emails and phone numbers

(also, buy lots and lots of ads)

• Sales hires a huge, costly, and

hungry sales staff

• Hungry salespeople work their way

down that lead list with cold calls,in-person visits

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This keeps sales & marketing busy, but…

• Marketing spends thousands /

millions on list buys & ads

• Sales spends $60K-$100K / year

per SMB rep working their way

down the lists

• 2% of the leads convert per month

• 98% of the contacts die

• That’s a huge amount of wasted budget.

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Is there a better way?

• Let’s build an outbound SMB

program to pitch everybody in the

country first.

• It’s going to be driven by sales –

so sales is going to write a

message to each prospect.

• If someone says they’re interested,

we’ll point them to sales.

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Let’s go get them.• Collect data at scale.

We built a list of every small business in the whole country

(engineering optional!)

• Learn their pain.We researched relevant data aboutevery one of those customers to pre-qualify

• Pitch at scale.We wrote each one of those customers a targeted, personal message from a salesperson

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Building the List

How many businesses

are there in the

United States?

Counting them Up• There are 27,908,021 American businesses according

to the 2012 US Census.

• 6,049,655 of those employ more than one person.




(Those are the interesting ones.)




(Those are the interesting ones.)

How would you get them?

How did I get this data?

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How did I get this data?You can go to a series of websites: • Yelp (47M establishments)

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• CrunchBase (650K Companies)

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• AngelList (289K Companies)

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• Manta

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• Manta

• Secretary of State Databases

(everything else)

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• Manta

• Secretary of State Databases

(everything else)

We didn’t go to… • Data.com

• Dunn & Bradstreet30

How did I get this data?For each site: • Put every business on the site

into a CSV file

• Figure out the business owner(s)

• Figure out the owner’s email address

• Verify it

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into a CSV file



• Verify it

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into a CSV file



• Verify it

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into a CSV file



• Verify it

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into a CSV file



• Verify it

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into a CSV file



• Verify it

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I’m assuming you’re not using developers to:

• Write crawlers, build machine learning systems, get fancy


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Virtual sales backup

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In-person SDR:$80K/year (full-time)Slow to hireCompetitive retention

Virtual staffers:$10/hr-$25/hr (contract)Unlimited, scalable supplyDedicated + motivated

Who should do the work?

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We used a lot of people.

Manila

Belgrade (100 total)

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Management: break out by states, then by industry.

California Team

New York Team

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Learning the Pain

Researching each prospect

Why not pitch every business the same way?• If we’re going to reach out to everybody in the country…

let’s not waste the pitch!

• Personalization works

• How can we do it at scale?

We researched each prospect at scale!

• Datanyze & BuiltWith:Look up the lists of technologies

used by each company

• LinkedIn:Look up the job history of each

prospect at a company.

We researched each prospect at scale!

• LinkedIn connections – who do

you know in common?

• Coworkers – who else works

there on their team?

• Social media activity – have they

complained about your

competitors?

• Product usage – what are these

folks using?

• Hiring patterns – are they hiring

for roles that would use your

product?

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Pitching Everybody

What’d we say and

how’d we say it?

Software for Emailing

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This market’s exploding!

• Tout

• Yesware

• Outreach.io

• Sidekick (Hubspot)

• PersistIQ

• Quickmail

We ended up rolling our ownso that we could rapidly classify replies.

Strategy

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Set up unique campaigns for

each state and industry.

Send prospecting messages fromindividual sales reps – not marketing

messages.

Use all the data we collected to make sure

the messages were personalized to the

person, business, and need.

Pitching leads

From: [email protected]: [email protected]: Michael said you needed insurance?

Hi Sarah,

I saw you guys were hiring for HR. We know each other through Michael James and I wanted to see if we might be able to help you scale your HR practices. I have an HR tool that automates your insurance selection. Let me know if you’d like to chat further – we’re doing this for SoldLead8 already.

BTW, congrats on your recent round!

Cheers!AK

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Subject line = crucial.Don’t use “quick question!”

mailto:[email protected]?subject=

Pitching leads

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Make it a custom, handwritten email

Don’t be salesy! Be helpful.


Hi Sarah,



Cheers!AK


Pitching leads

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Be genuine + helpful – don’t spam.Show social proof. Prove you’re not a robot – include personal

Double-Tap: LinkedIn profile view on the same date!


Hi Sarah,



Cheers!AK


How much of this email had to be written

by hand?

Question

How much of this email had to be written

by hand?

Answer

None.

Mass customization

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Binary buying signal (compelling event – one of four possibilities)


Hi Sarah,



Cheers!AK


Mass customization

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LinkedIn… (obviously)


Hi Sarah,



Cheers!AK


Mass customization

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Sector-by-sector comparison through a lead list to find sold customers in their sector


Hi Sarah,



Cheers!AK


Mass customization

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Background Research


Hi Sarah,



Cheers!AK


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Putting it All Together

How’d this all work?

Our basic unit of pitching

A 3-person team: • 1 virtual lead generation rep

• Researches new leads

• 1 outreach/writing staffer

• Sends emails

• 1 manager/QA staffer (!!!)

• Saves you time

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Putting it All Together

We gave prospectors: • LinkedIn Premium

• Email access in MailGenius

• Pitching on behalf of sales reps

inside organizations

We gave researchers: • LinkedIn Premium

• Google Spreadsheets

• Import.io

• Rapportive

• Toofr (verification)

• Datanyze or BuiltWith

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Sample results

One team of 3 like this can produce: • 30 verified leads per hour

• 1200 leads per week

• 1200 emails per week

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33 teams could produce: • 660 verified leads per hour

• 26400 leads per week

• 26400 emails per week

• ~1.5 million leads a year

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Results

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Results

3M companies were collected over 24 months.120K person-hours of research

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Results


Someone at your company probably got an email

that started with us.

Campaign low: 0.1% PRR

Campaign high: 30% PRR

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Results


Someone at your company probably got an email

that started with us.

Campaign low: 0.1% PRR

Campaign high: 30% PRR

Our customer picked up 2000 new clients in the first 12 months of prospecting.

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Results (your inbox may vary)

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Results

Would we brute-force collect this info again?

Recap

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No.

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No.

We already have a databaseof every small and midsize

business in the country.

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You can do this today using the sametools we used two years back, but…

by now LeadGenius (+ others) have built:

• crawlers + automated extraction tools

• automated verification tools

• tools to dump into CRMNo need to reinvent the wheel.

Takeaways

You can do things that don't scale when going

after SMB, if you use the right technology.

Sales can pitch small and midsize businesses

using the same tactics that work in marketing

(personalization at scale).

Use technology and data collection to make

your prospecting targeted and customized.

That’s it!• Tell me what’s working for

you:[email protected], @polybot

• If you want to use our software or data: www.leadgenius.com, @leadgenius

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mailto:[email protected]

http://www.leadgenius.com

What I’ll share with you tonight:

• Strategies we used to: — source hundreds of leads / week on the cheap, using either

software (free or paid) or virtual staffers (paid)— pitch and engage with 50-100 small and midsize customers per day, automatically and convincingly–– repeatably generate consistent sales from virtual outbound,

either solo or with a marketing team

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Advanced Techniques That Work

1. Content marketing mash-up.

Share targeted content

aimed at your audience at

the same time as an email

campaign. (LinkedIn,

email). Ask marketing for

help.

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Blog Post

Dedicated Landing Page

Outbound

2. Scripting responses

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From: [email protected]: [email protected]

Subj: Quick Question, Sarah Hi Sarah,

I saw you guys were hiring for SDRs. We know each

other through Michael James and I wanted to see if we might be able to help you scale your SDR team. I have a few extra SDRs we

can push your way.

Let me know if you’d like to chat further – we’re doing this for SoldLead8 already.


Cheers! AK

Interested?Here’s 3 times that work for

me!

Here’s more information!

Check back later.

Specific question

Automatically schedule a

follow-up mail

mailto:[email protected]

3. Send before you hire.

• Reps ramp far faster when they have leads to close against.

• When you hire a sales rep, start sending emails for them!

• Let them walk into ready deal flow and live calls.

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4. Other outbound tips

• Mix it up! Authenticity is maximally important as email becomes an

increasingly crowded channel.

• Consider non-email channels (InMail) or asking for referrals from your

own network to penetrate into companies before contacting

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4. Other outbound tips

• Rank your leads.

• Don’t send outbound to EVERYBODY

• Message against buying signals.

• Start with folks with hot “buying signals”

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Monitor your team closely to make sure it works.

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ROI is everything!

Monitor your team closely to make sure it works.

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pitching every midsize business in america (for fun and profit) (anand kukarni, co-founder,...

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