Common outbound advice: "Start at the C-suite and work your way down."
Is this approach not working for you?
Try this instead: Find gatekeepers holding the keys to non-obvious entry points in the account
Sure, we'd all love to start sales cycles at the very top.
But most executives get hundreds of emails every day. They have assistants helping manage their inboxes.
If you're trying to land a meeting with an exec through a cold email, good luck. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. It's just a very low-percentage play.
You're better off targeting a prospect or team specializing in solving the problem your solution helps with.
These prospects are great because:
✅ They care a lot about the problem your solution solves
✅ They're way easier to reach than senior execs
✅ They have tons of insights to share
How do you find these prospects or teams?
Your top AEs' deals.
1) Reverse-engineer the best deals closed in the last 12 months
2) Look closely at every stakeholder's job title involved
3) Look at who the first meeting was with
4) Look for and ask those AEs about non-typical job titles/roles involved in their deals
One more pro tip: Ask prospects in your active deals if they have specialists or teams related to the problem at hand
Here are a few examples of non-typical roles I've found with my clients
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- Security Solutions -
👍 Typical personas: CIOs, CISOs, VP of Security/Risk, etc.
💡 Non-typical persona example: Plant Safety Manager in a manufacturing plant
- Purchasing/Procurement Solutions -
👍 Typical personas: CFO, VP of Finance, Procurement leader, etc.
💡 Non-typical persona example: Facilities Manager in a government or higher-ed building
- MedTech solutions -
👍 Typical personas: Clinical Operations, R&D, Compliance
💡 Non-typical persona example: Patient Safety, in charge of mitigating high-risk disasters with medical products
- DevOps solutions -
👍 Typical personas: VP of IT, DevOps leader, CIO
💡 Non-typical persona example: Developer Productivity (think enablement but for engineers)
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Use these non-typical personas as starting points in your outreach. If they're senior enough, they can be great champions. If nothing else, you can gain killer insights to bring to their execs or potentially get intros.