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Charly Johnson here! If we haven't met before, I'm a top AE at Salesloft, multiple-time 30MPC Guest and Club Coach... and today I'm hijacking the 30MPC newsletter 😈
Most reps skip proper account segmentation because it feels like “non-selling” work. But without it, outreach turns into a volume game instead of a prioritized strategy.
The result? You spray messages across your territory, hoping something sticks.
If your outreach isn’t landing, it’s probably not just your messaging - it’s who you’re focusing on.
So today we're breaking down how to prioritize accounts in 3 buckets:
- Signals (Trigger-Based Outreach)
- Tier 1 Accounts (Personalized Outreach)
- Tier 2/3 Accounts (Scaled Outreach)
Let's dive in.
(Psssst: I originally wrote this piece in my newsletter and you can subscribe here!)
Signals (Trigger-Based Outreach)
⏳ Spend 45% of your prospecting time here!
Think of this as WARM outreach where they're already familiar with you, so they're much easier to break into than even your best fit Tier 1 accounts.
Examples of warm, trigger-based signals include:
- Closed Lost Opportunities: Just because they didn’t buy last time doesn’t mean their problem disappeared.
- Website Visits: Someone from the account visited your company's website.
- Champions Moving to a New Company: If someone who liked you at Company A just joined Company B, they’re an easy in!
Speed & consistency matters more than personalization here, believe it or not. Because they're in a prime buying window, you don't need to burn your time digging for those details on their new puppy—focus on the trigger or signal all.
Here's an example email of what that looks like:
Looks like someone from your team has been checking out our pricing page, Billy.
Makes sense, given you’re hiring AEs focused on "outbound acquisition".
Many AEs see themselves as deal closers and leave prospecting to SDRs.
How are you shifting this mindset?
Let me know if this is remotely relevant.
Tier 1 (Personalized Outreach)
⏳ Spend ~40% of your prospecting time here!
These are top accounts that will help me overachieve Q targets. They require more effort if there's not a signal, but the payoff is worth it due to the ICP fit and deal size.
You want to focus on in-depth, personalized outreach for Tier 1 accounts:
- In-depth research: Understand their industry, external factors, sales motion, and key priorities from annual reports, earnings calls, and funding news.
- Groundswell: Gather intel from lower-level employees to uncover challenges, internal focus areas, and potential intros.
- Mutual connections: Identify shared connections - can I get an intro or help finding the right PoC?
- Strategic execution: Go beyond a multichannel approach. Exec alignment (my VP reaches out to their VP), marketing runs targeted ads, etc.
Here's another example email of what that looks like:
Oliver said you’ve recently taken over Outreach responsibilities & to send you a message!
Read that CompanyABC reduced losses and increased turnover by hiring less.
With this & expansion into Canada, I’d imagine there’s a focus on making the current team more effective as you scale.
Salesloft uses AI to prioritise tasks, surface key insights, and help teams close deals faster.
Worth exchanging a few messages to explore?
Tier 2/3 (Scaled Outreach)
⏳ Spend ~15% of your prospecting time here.
These are good-fit accounts that aren’t as urgent or strategic. They help with pipeline consistency, but outreach needs to be scalable.
The key to Tier 2/3 is finding ways to scale your research using buckets or AI:
- Scalable Cadences, Sequences, and Templates: Personalized but not as deep as Tier 1, making it easy to scale.
- AI-Assisted Research: Use AI tools to quickly pull key insights (tech stack, recent activity, news) without hours of manual research.
Here's one last email example, notice that it's still referencing an AE hiring role. It's not completely templated, it's just a common signal I could use on multiple accounts.
The AE role you're hiring for emphasises new logo bookings, Billy.
How are your sellers managing their workload without neglecting prospecting?
Kallidu saw their AEs increase self-source bookings by 24% using Rhythm to prioritize contacts more likely to convert.
Something you're thinking about or am I off here...?
If you can get it right...
If you spend your time on the right accounts, you'll avoid wasted effort on lower priority accounts and book more meetings in fewer messages by striking when timing is right.
And if you wanna master cold email, I run a coaching session every Thursday as a 30MPC Club Coach in the Club Pass program.
You can learn more about that right here :)
