What’s going on folks! It’s Mark Kosoglow and today I’m stealing Mondo’s seat on the 30MPC newsletter.
(If we haven’t met before, I was Outreach’s first employee and sales leader from $0-100M ARR, CRO at Catalyst, and today I’m Founder/CEO at Operator.AI)
“Lean into AI or fall behind!” is pounded into the heads of sales reps day after day. The problem is that most sales reps, or sales leaders for that matter, don’t have any clue how to utilize AI effectively.
Similar to when I was Employee #1 and VP of Sales at Outreach and Sequences were rolled out for the first time, AI is either being ignored and reps are falling behind the top 1%, or it’s being abused and used improperly which is completely ruining it for everyone else (Think: Mass blasting sequences without relevancy)
AI should be used to help reps streamline the research process by pulling data, analyzing the data, and contextualizing that data so that reps can craft their POV to be used in cold calls, email messages, and LinkedIn outreach.
So today we're breaking down 3 steps to leverage AI for outbound messaging:
- Pick a data source
- Use AI to find true company and industry insight
- Connect the dots in your (human) messaging
Let’s roll!
Step 1: Pick a Data Source
There are two things you need to think about here: what data do you need and where can you get it?
1: Data Points: Think about the board-level metric or topic most related to your problem space: revenue, headcount, product launches, funding, or industry keywords (ie: logistics) will allow you to attach a tactical problem to big business priority in their 10-K.
2: Data Sources: Large publicly traded companies will have 10-K reports, investor information, and quarterly earnings calls. Smaller companies have Crunchbase pages, funding announcement, company’s news pages, or even a good old fashioned Google search may give you an interview with the CEO that gives you everything you need.
Know what you're looking for and where to find it? Let's use AI to surface the nuggets.
2: Use AI to find true company and industry insight
The key is to create a bridge between research and relevance to your product, using AI to help us supercharge the process.
Let's say we're a full-service marketing agency doing research on Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Step 1: Load the data into ChatGPT (or any AI chatbot) and ask for a data point. In this case, which products had the biggest decline in sales?
Step 2: Sounds like there's a decline in fitness and outdoor activities. Let's figure out if this is an industry-wide problem or a DSG problem:
Step 3: Aha! Seems like it's an industry trend. Now, let's find out if there's an initiative for DSG that we can use to support the industry decline in sales?
We've got a problem, a priority, and now all we need to do is figure out what we can do to help support them.
Step 4: Simulate an expert running a marketing agency and ask them to attach potential solutions to the problems we uncovered:
Step 3: Connect the dots in your (human) messaging
Now, this is when most reps try to write the cold email in ChatGPT, but the hard part is using your human brain to connect all the dots.
Note: You COULD prompt ChatGPT to write the email and iterate from there, but for the sake of practice, let’s break it down:
[Company Metric] Scrolling through the DSG 10-K, your CFO mentioned that the 5% revenue growth was just short of the goal because of a decline in fitness and outdoor sales.
[Industry Insight] It's actually not just you all, but the whole industry saw a decline in outdoor retail sales by 3% last year.
[Company Priority] It's awesome that your team is battling this by driving awareness of the new DICK’S House of Sports and Golf Galaxy Performance Centers you’re rolling out this year, which is why I reached out.
[Where We Help] We've helped folks like REI run influencer collaborations, live events, and a whole social media series to make sure that their outdoor goods keep flying of the shelves (they actually grew 7% despite everyone else shrinking by 3%).
[CTA] Open to learning more?
Now compare this to most cold emails your prospects get. Reps usually find one small tactical problem and then immediately jump to their solution.
But here, we tore apart their 10-K, showed them an industry insight they might not have known, identified a business priority, then showed them how we helped an industry peer.
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That's a wrap folks!
By the way, this is exactly the type of problem I'm solving at Operator.AI. We've entered The Great Ignore and we're building something to help sellers break through the noise.
If you wanna check it out, you can get early access to our waitlist right here: Join The Operator Waitlist
