Check out the show notes, more free content, and get coaching at https://outboundsquad.com

How Brooksource's 180+ AEs self-source pipeline (with zero SDR support) and convert cold calls at 35%

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Brooksource doesn't sell SaaS. They sell professional services.

For my tech sales teams out there—we can learn a lot from how they outbound.

Their AEs self-source 100% of their pipeline. Zero SDR support. And they close big enterprise deals.

Here's how they approach outbound for their AEs:

✅ Start with Leadership enablement

They enable leaders FIRST before training the reps. Every single leader understands the process, can execute it themselves, and knows how to coach their reps.

💡 Insight: Don't fall prey to a "blind leading the blind" situation. Enable leadership before enabling reps.

✅ Prescriptive guidance on targeting

Brooksource is a very data-driven company. Their ops team tracks everything.

They can tell you, by rep, everything from outbound activity...to meetings set...to late-stage sales meetings set...and their conversion rates. Most SaaS orgs couldn't give an accurate snapshot of their AEs self-sourcing efforts.

Then they take it a layer deeper.

Their leaders know exactly what types of accounts are best. Who to get conversations started with. And most importantly, what's a bad fit that should be ignored.

💡 Insight: Give reps very specific guidance on territory planning and where it's best to spend their time

✅ Provide killer cold call talk tracks

They believe that prospects don't care about their solutions until they know you understand their problems.

For every persona, they supply high-level talking points:

- Trends
- Common problems
- Typical business priorities
etc.

When their reps pick up the phone, they can be laser-focused on messaging. And the entire sales org. can rally around a common, standardized approach to the phones.

This alone increased their live conversation to booked meeting conversion from 22-35%. 35% is top 1%-er stuff. You rarely see an entire sales team convert at that level.

💡 Insight: Gather common priorities for every persona in every industry vertical. Wordsmith with your best reps/leaders. Then roll out to the entire team.

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Mitch Thomas heads up enablement at Brooksource. They're one of the best examples of an organization that doesn't just talk about AE self-sourcing—they live it. And I've seen it first-hand.

Catch our conversation here: https://outboundsquad.com/jason-bay-339/

Running competitor takedown campaigns? Don't make these mistakes

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Let's get a list of every target account using a competitor. Then go directly at them talking about how much better we are.

Sounds great in theory, right?

But rarely—I mean, you're getting lucky—if that approach works for your sales org.

A company will only switch solutions under this circumstance:

They're experiencing buyer's regret. Which happens 56% of the time in SaaS (Gartner).

Buyer's regret happens for multiple reasons:

- Low adoption
- Feature gaps
- Poor customer service
- etc.

Ultimately, they're not achieving the outcomes they signed up for.

If you're running competitive takedown campaigns, don't make these mistakes:

⛔️ 1:many approach across a huge list

1:many without serious thought about segmentation isn't very effective.

Don't make the mistake of building a target account list with hundreds/thousands of folks using your competitors.

Then letting reps go hog wild on a mass blast cold email campaign.

✅ What to do instead: Build small segments

Find small pockets within those accounts that you can speak to in the same way:

1) Current customers who have piecemealed together your solution with a competitor
2) Break the account list down by specific competitors
3) Accounts showing intent
4) Accounts with previous closed/lost deals (bonus points if you get specific with the closed/lost reason: missing features you have now, budget, didn't get to power, etc.)
5) Accounts where you have executive connections
6) Accounts with previous customers
etc.

Get very specific so you can tailor messaging more easily.

⛔️ Feature battle

"Our competitor doesn't have this ______ feature...and we do!"

Hold up there, sparky. Again, sounds great in theory but needs to be taken to the next level.

End users might care about specific features, but executives do not.

✅ Tailor messaging to the persona

Start by listing the top 3 areas of differentiation between you and the competitor.

Don't stop there. Now list out the problems & impact those prospects are likely having without your solution.

That's what you lead with.

Example:

Differentiation: You have one-click checkout, your competitors do not

Problem/Impact: Conversion rate on the website is half of what it could be, fewer customers make purchases. You lose sales, waste marketing dollars, etc.

The message should be less: "We offer one-click checkout, and our competitors don't..."

And more: "The top DTC shoe brands allow customers to purchase in one-click—a strategy that significantly reduces the odds of a customer adding an item to their cart and never checking out..."

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There's a ton more to competitor takedown campaigns. But this is a good start.

Want more?

I'm running a free training with Anthony Iannarino, Ralph Barsi, and Ryan Oostervald from ZoomInfo next Wed 7/24.

The topic: Displacing Competitors: How to eat your competitor's lunch

Register here to join us: https://hubs.ly/Q02Dds1G0

Marketing and product should not be creating personas for sales. Here's why...

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Marketing is great at 1:many communication:

- Content
- Conversion (website, landing pages, etc.)
- Paid campaigns

But sales is all about 1:1 conversations:

- Outbound emails & calls
- Discovery conversations
- Demos
- Negotiations
etc.

1:many language doesn't translate well into sales conversions.

If you rely on marketing-created personas in sales, you'll run into these problems:

⛔️ Low reply rates to cold emails
⛔️ Low-performing sequences
⛔️ Trouble getting access to power in deals
⛔️ Generic, boring sales decks
⛔️ Long ramp times for new reps (especially young SDRs)

My suggestion?

Use what marketing creates as a starting point. And then take it to the next level.

Every persona should have the following:

✅ Priorities

Common priorities you would align the solution to. Speak to the most typical executive priorities your customers have across specific products.

✅ Current solutions

Common solutions to those problems. The people, process, tech they use to get the job done.

✅ Problems

How the current solutions get in the way of the priority. Speak to the impact and "so what?"

✅ Desired future state

What the prospect ultimately hopes to accomplish.

✅ Segmented by industry or company size

On an enterprise level, you might go even deeper and create messaging like this across specific industry verticals and company sizes.

Example: A CFO at a F500 manufacturer is different from the CFO of a bank.

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As the sales org, it's your responsibility to take marketing personas a layer or two deeper.

Do this and you'll see much better results from your outbound and selling efforts.

Marketing shouldn't write cold email sequences. Here's why...

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I said this before, and I'll say it again: I love my marketers out there. And I consider myself a marketer.

But marketers have to stop writing cold emails.

Whenever I see a poorly performing sequence—the first think I ask is who wrote them.

And almost always, the marketing or demand gen team owns the email copy.

Marketing is great at 1:many —

✅ Creating inbound interest through content
✅ Capturing interest and demand
✅ Creative differentiation and positioning in the marketplace

Marketing is not great at 1:1 —

⛔️ Cold email copy
⛔️ Cold call talk tracks
⛔️ Sales conversations

So, PLEASE PLEASE let sales own sales messaging. Anything outbound related should be owned by sales with the assistance of marketing.

The image below shows the difference between a marketing and sales written cold email.

Those marketing emails will get <1% reply rates. And the sales emails can get double-digit reply rates.

Take your pick.

Check out the show notes, more free content, and get coaching at https://outboundsquad.com