Staging environment

Scale Founder-Led Sales Without Hiring Sales Reps

When your founder was doing sales it was great, because they knew your customer's problems. But, they couldn't scale... until now.

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Course overview

Send 15,000 Emails to Test 5 Campaigns in Just 8 Weeks

Start with signs of product market fit, take your hypothesis to only companies with the most publicly visible signs of that problem, then send 15,000 good emails to 5 different test audiences in just 8 weeks with only a $4k budget for data (outside of the course cost).

Who is this course for

01

Founders who want to rapidly test if their market has a problem or take founder-led sales to the next level without a sales rep.

02

Chief Marketing Officer/VP of Sales who are struggling with building a predictable pipeline.

03

GTM Teams who have to depend on SDRs to harass your customers to get on the phone.

What you’ll get out of this course

Rank your Entire Target Addressable Market

You'll leave with every domain in your TAM scored by what's important to you, so you can find the top 5% of the market that needs you the most now.

Build Playbooks by Pain, Not Persona

Find customer pain programmatically, write sentences about that pain, find leads with a predictable process, and automate great emails to customers without having to send them 1 by 1.

Save on Hiring SDRs and Needlessly Expensive Data

You don't need a $30,000 ZoomInfo subscription, a $20,000 6Sense annual agreement, or $500,000 Salesforce install. And you won't need to hire, train, and fire teams of Sales Development Representatives.

Never (Okay, Mostly Never) Land in Spam

Create multiple outbound inboxes that pass spam filters and that you can scale (with good messaging). Get the hell outta here with your "quick question" subject lines. The worse your targeting and your messaging, the more you'll be eating spam for email dinner.

Low Cost, High Quality, Data Just For You

With a $4,000 budget we will set you up with modern low-cost tools to score your TAM, find perfect fits, create data just for you, and scale what works. With a little budget and a little ingenuity, you got this!

Your Sales Reps Should Not Do OUTBOUND

Your Sales Reps
Should Not Do OUTBOUND

You Can't Learn From Your SDRs

Your sales reps (SDRs) are incentivized to withhold education from your organization. And, if they crack it, they get promoted. If they don't they get demoted or fired. You get no compound learning from this structure.

You Made Your SDRs Loud, Not Insightful

You spent tens of thousands on ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Seamless so they could talk talk everyone, but gave them nothing good to say. So they beg for attention and never talk about your advantage.

Your SDRs Don't Know Your Market

Founders never teach their first SDR what they tried, what works, what fails, what they already know about talking to tens or hundreds of customers 1 by 1. And then they say, now you go sell...

What people are saying

        Jordan was instrumental in getting Bouncer our first $1 million in sales. He was an invaluable advisor taking me, a founder CEO without any sales experience, to closing sales with billion dollar companies.
Will Megson

Will Megson

CEO @ Bouncer (acq. by Stripe)
        Eric is one of the most elite sales strategists out there. Over the last year while I was building the outbound motion at Dooly - Eric was a key resource for helping fine-tune our outbound strategy and list building. Somebody akin to the Tony Stark of sales
Saad Khan

Saad Khan

Business Development Manager @ Vendr
        Jordan Crawford is the best I've ever seen (hyperbole is great, but so is honesty!)
Jay Gutnick

Jay Gutnick

Founder @ Teal Canvas
        This is awesome! I've though about doing something like this but you actually did it!
Max Kolysh

Max Kolysh

CEO @ Dover
        Eric’s a human knowledge base when it comes to prospecting and cold outreach. Very clued up on the latest tech and prospecting strategies, and I’d recommend him to anyone looking to generate serious results from cold outreach.
Ben Robinson

Ben Robinson

Senior Account Executive @ Matterport
        Today I had my head exploded by Jordan in Athens. This dude is a savant with email marketing!
Foti Panagiotakopoulos

Foti Panagiotakopoulos

Founder @ GrowthMentor
        These two men are reputable. Follow Audrey's insta @a_thrifted_wardrobe
Audrey Danser

Audrey Danser

Jordan's girlfriend / paid actor
        They never stop talking...
Irena Pergjika, LPC, LMHC

Irena Pergjika, LPC, LMHC

Eric's Wife / paid actor

Meet your instructors

Jordan Crawford

Jordan Crawford

Founder @ Blueprint

I cut my teeth (who says that?) in growth in 2016 when I helped Zinc.com grow from 1 to 100M in GMV in 2 years. Since then I've worked with companies like Mainstreet, Vouch, Ironclad, TestBox, MarketerHire, and more to test and iterate on outbound at scale by pain, not persona.


In my free time I do this... and long walks on the beach. And sushi. But you didn't come here for any of that.

Eric Nowoslawski

Eric Nowoslawski

Founder @ Growth Engine X

Eric has worked with 100s of Bootstrapped and VC backed companies to help them scale their outbound Go-To-Market motion.


He is an expert in email deliverability, data sourcing, web scraping, and cold email copywriting.


When he is not building GTM engines, he is training for an Ironman or flying his FPV drone.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Feb 27—Mar 5

    Setup Your Email

    Before we do anything strategic, we need to setup you email boxes and begin warming them. This allows us to:


    1. Ensure high deliverability (we aim for 50-80% open rates)

    2. Ample time to get them ready to send at volume (750 emails + per day).

    3. Set you up for success by registering new domains and building inboxes for testing.

    4. Save your main domain from ever landing in spam.

    • 📄

      Full Email Setup Guide

    Top Reasons Why You Will Fail

    A good mental model to help ensure you get a lot from this course is for us to outline failure modes, and what leads outbound systems to fail.


    These are the patterns you should attempt to avoid.

    If you fix NOTHING, fix this one problem.


    You Don't REALLY Know Your Customers

    Talk to your customers, interview them. Get to know how they describe your product. What they were doing before you, what their alternatives were, why they chose you, how they found you, If their language doesn't match your language, that's a problem. Use wynter.com or forgethefunnel.com to understand your customers.


    The rest of these are in no particular order.


    You Provide a Bad Offer:

    A bad offer includes asking for time on the first email, making people read a huge PDF, sending generic advice that doesn't apply to them, making them pay for something of value. The best version of a cold email is one that's useful by itself, on first send, that gives them value ahead of time. If you're promising future value, if your email is not so good that someone would forward it WITHOUT buying your service, it's much more likely to fail.


    You Don't Talk About Customer Benefits

    No one cares about your speeds and feeds. Sure, I can tell people about how much data I have, how many emails I have sent, my open rates, how I scrape data... but at the end of the day my customers want to know, "how can I acquire a customer for a very low price at scale?" And that's why people buy.


    You Can't Quantify Your Benefits

    "You'll get more" sucks. "You'll get 5% more" is better. "You'll save $12,320 a month based on your traffic and AWS costs given X, Y, and Z. Customers like X saved $Y" is best. Don't say generic things unless you expect generic responses.


    You Think About Scale First, Not Value First

    Don't worry if it scales, we can help you do that. Imagine you had unlimited time to write and research ONE email. What would the perfect, research focused, email say? How specific can you get.


    You Can't Find Any Public Evidence of the Problem

    e.g. If you say, we help companies reduce their average handle time for calls—SO CAN EVERYONE ELSE! If you can say, "I noticed that you use X software and there is a 3 minute delay in connection time on that software, which means that if you're losing 459 hours a month on transfer time alone." That is powerful. Find clever ways to actually showcase the problem on the first email.


    Your Customers Don't Use Email Much

    Trying to go after doctors or engineers? Or construction workers? These audiences aren't really amazing on email. Or like if your customers runs their business fully offline, it’s hard to find good data to quantify problems.


    You Don't Know Your Market or Your Competitors

    If you can't explain what your competitors are doing, trends in your market, or why you're different, you're doomed. Here's a good matrix to try and outline your value.


    You Are Afraid to Cold Call

    Cold calling is the best way to battle test your hypothesis that you understand your customers, that you can speak their language, that you know their problems. We will give you cell numbers of your ideal customers if you will cold call them to test your message on them. Or pay wynter.com instead.


    You Don't Know the Data

    There's so much data out there, bespoke data sets, on your customers and their problems. Yelp reviews, G2 reviews, data on their website, Glassdoor, case studies, communities, public groups, etc. There's usually a 10x better data set, a perfect example of where potential customers discuss their problems. Search out for this, don't worry about structuring the data, just find perfect examples of the problem online.


    You Don't Have Case Studies

    Case studies are ways to structure research about your customer. To know what they care about, how they talk, and how your solution benefits them, in their words.


    The Switching Costs / Inaction Costs are Too High

    It's also quite possible you don't solve a top tier problem of theirs, that the economy has shifted around you, and that your solution isn't differentiated in the market. If you write manual emails that are research heavy, about problems, and no one replies--this may be the case.

Week 2

Mar 6—Mar 12

    Define your TAM (Be Unconventional)

    When thinking about defining your Total Addressable Market (TAM), here is what you should be thinking about:


    1. Define your market: Clearly define the specific industries, geographical locations, and company sizes that you want to target.


    2. Research company details: Gather as much information as possible about the companies on your list, including their size, revenue, number of employees, and any recent news or developments. Spend time on their website, look through their LinkedIn profiles, read news sources, read reviews on G2. Your perfect list of filters isn't in Apollo, but it's usually somewhere on the internet... we'll help you structure it IF you can find it.


    3. Identify common pain points: Research the common challenges and pain points that companies in your target market face, and consider how your product or service can solve these problems. You might use Reddit, G2, Glassdoor. Or use services like wynter.com or forgetthefunnel.com to survey your buyers. Or just pay buyers to learn more. You need to structure the common pain points of your buyers. Without this step, we'll be guessing not for 5 weeks, but 5 months. Do this work.


    4. Evaluate budget and purchasing power: Consider the budget and purchasing power of your target companies to ensure that they have the resources to invest in your product or service.


    5. Audit your list to determine company fit 1-1: After you have your TAM, audit it. Determine whether the companies on your list are a good fit for your product or service based on their business needs and goals by performing the same research you did above. You want to make sure your list is accurate as this will determine the success of the entire engagement.


    6. Analyze competitors: Research the competitors that your target companies currently work with and consider how your product or service compares. Remember they are going to market with a similar service or offering and if you sound like them, you won't be able to differentiate yourself


    7. Prioritize your prospective companies: Prioritize your list of prospects based on factors such as their potential value, likelihood of closing a deal, and fit. Generally speaking, smaller companies will close much faster, but pay a lot less. Medium size companies usually have better budgets, but more people are involved in the decision making process.


    The purpose TAM list is not huge, between 20k to 200k companies. It's just a way to ELIMINATE a lot of companies you shouldn't go after. In future steps, we'll narrow down exactly how to target based on their current pain.

    • 📄

      How to Define Your TAM

    • ✍️

      Define Your TAM

      Submit by Nov 29

    Customer Discovery

    This is by far the hardest module, because it will force you to challenge your own understanding of your customer. It will ask you to structure what you know about your customer.


    1. Have Conversations With Customers:
    2. Survey Your Customers:
    3. Find Indicators of the Problem:


    There are many ways to collect audience insights. You can: 

    • Run target market interviews

    • Send a survey to your email subscribers

    • Mine reviews of competing solutions

    • Use audience intelligence or customer discovery tools

    • Do social listening in forums and communities where your target audience hangs out



    Website Survey Questions 

    The goal of your website survey is to document your potential customer’s life before they’ve found a solution. Here are the questions to ask: 

    1. Which of these best describes you? 
    2. I'm considering a [product type] for the first time; not sure it's for me yet.  
    3. I know I need a [product type]. I’m just trying to find the best option.
    4. I know [product name], but I'm not a customer yet.
    5. I’m already using [product name]. I’m just here to sign in.
    6. Other [click to type].
    7. What tool(s) do you currently use for [problem], if anything? (online or offline) 
    8. Is there anything you dislike or want to change about your current solution(s)? If so, please describe.
    9. What matters most as you look for a new solution?
    10. Is there anything holding you back from [booking a demo/signing up] right now?


    The multiple-choice first question—Which of these best describes you?—helps you understand the level of awareness most of your visitors are at when they arrive on your site: how aware of your product they are, of the problem you solve, and how ready they are to take action.

    The second question—What tool(s) do you currently use for [problem], if anything?— provides insight on what visitors currently use to solve their problem. If they’re not using anything, it gives details as to what life is like before your product.

    The third question—Is there anything you dislike or want to change about your current solution(s)?—reveals how their current solution contributes to their struggle. It highlights what’s not working.

    The fourth question—What matters most as you look for a new solution?—is especially important: it uncovers what message to prioritize on your website. It enables you to say: “Hey, we know you struggle with X! Guess what: we have your solution!”

    The fifth question—Is there anything holding you back from [booking a demo/signing up] right now?—helps you understand the anxieties, unanswered questions, and other blockers that prevent your website visitors from taking action.

    Now, you might be concerned about how a website survey could impact your conversion rates. Or maybe you’re worried about distracting visitors who may otherwise be qualified leads. Don’t worry: we have best practices and specific advice on how to run a survey that takes these concerns into account. 

    Just like with our customer research resources, you can grab a copy of these website survey questions and our survey best practices in the workbook.


    When we say “Jobs-to-be-Done” (JTBD), what we mean is:

    1. The struggle
    2. That motivated customers…
    3. To seek a desired outcome


    To understand the Job your customer “hires” your solution for—the one that led them to “fire” their past solution, search for new ones, and ultimately choose yours—you need clarity on:

    • The struggle… (When I…)
    • That motivated customers… (help me…)
    • To seek a desired outcome. (so I can…)

    Taken together, these three elements (struggle, motivation, desired outcome) summarize your customer’s experience into a customer job statement



    The four steps we’ll take are:

    1. Identify the struggles, motivations and desired outcomes in the responses to your questions
    2. Look for the common themes
    3. Define the top few Jobs your customers hire your solution for
    4. Pick one Job to prioritize


    Customers’ struggles will appear in response to these kinds of questions: 

    • Take me back to life before [product name]. Prior to [product name], what were you using instead? If you were using a combination of any tools or products, what were those?
    • Tell me about the moment you realized [old way] wasn’t cutting it. What caused that moment? What compelled you to look for something different?
    • Where did you go to look for new solutions? Did you try anything else before [product name]?


    Customers’ motivations will appear in response to these kinds of questions: 

    • What was the most important to you in a new solution? 

    • Why did you decide to choose us over the other options? Can you recall if anything in particular stood out to you? 

    • What deal breakers would have prevented you from choosing us? 

    • Once you started using our product, what happened that made you feel certain it was right for you? 


    Customers’ desired outcome themes will appear in response to this question: 

    • How are you using [product name] day-to-day?

    • What’s the #1 thing you’re able to do now, that you weren’t able to do before?


    Your choice might already seem obvious, but just in case, there are a few helpful factors to consider when making your choice: 

    Urgency to solve their struggle: From the customer’s perspective, which Job were people in the biggest hurry to solve? Which one required a solution yesterday? It’s much easier to sell a painkiller than a vitamin.

    Willingness to pay for value: These customers understand the value your product provides, are prepared to pay for that value, and are most likely to have the budget to do so. 

    Less hand holding/sales burden: For product-led solutions, these are the customers that need less support to purchase or onboard into your product. They’re able to get the value it provides without constant emails or support tickets to your team. For sales-led, there is a clear champion solving the problem, there are fewer layers of leadership to convince, they have fewer questions, or they require less training.

    High retention potential: Do customers with this Job have a long-term recurring need to use the product, or is it a one-off? Those with a recurring need will stick around longer and are more likely to build an ongoing habit around using the product, meaning they're less likely to churn.

    Expansion and upsell potential: How likely is it that once this customer has solved their Job with your product, other struggles will arise that they can also solve by using additional features or upgrading to the next pricing tier? 

    Congregate in ways you can target: Do customers with one Job tend to gather in ways that make it easier for you to find and connect with them more than another? Demographic data may be useful to layer in here. Customers with shared job titles, stages of growth, or industry can be easier to craft messaging and target marketing for. 

    Other criteria, or the wildcards: There may be criteria unique to your company that could push your Job choice in one direction or another. It could be related to your company’s vision—you have a higher passion for solving one particular Job over others. You may, because of your background or experience, have an unfair advantage with one over another. You could decide to prioritize one Job based on where your product and team are today. One Job might be solvable using a self-serve, product-led approach with a lower touch (and cost) to acquire customers. Another may require a sales-led approach, needing a higher touch and leading to bigger contracts. One might leverage product foremost, the other a sales team, and your company might already be stronger in one of these areas.


    Mapping the customer’s experience starts by breaking it down into three main phases: 

    • The Struggle phase: your customer realizes they have a problem and begins seeking and exploring possible solutions
    • The Evaluation phase: your customer commits to try your product and decides it’s the solution they were looking for
    • The Growth phase: your customer successfully embeds your product into their daily life and even may use it in new ways beyond the scope of the original problem.

    Struggle

    Evaluation

    Growth


    Within each phase, there are three questions you’ll answer using your customer data:

    • What is the customer thinking as they struggle, evaluate, and grow?
    • What is the customer doing as they struggle, evaluate, and grow?

    What is the customer feeling as they struggle, evaluate, and grow?



    Questions you ask in your research (covered in Chapters 3 and 4) will give you insight into what your customers with this Job were thinking, what they were doing, and how they were feeling during their Struggle phase. Those questions include:

    • When did you first start using [product name]?
    • Take me back to life before [product name]. Prior to [product name], what were you using instead? If you were using a combination of any tools or products, what were those?
    • Tell me about the moment you realized [old way] wasn’t cutting it. What caused that moment? What compelled you to look for something different?
    • Where did you go to look for new solutions? Did you try anything else before [product name]?
    • How did you find out about [product name]? 
    • Why did you decide to choose [product name] over other options? Can you recall anything that stood out to you?

    Let’s look at survey responses from SparkToro’s customers that give us insight into their Struggle phase:

    Survey question: When did you realize you needed something like SparkToro? What was going on in your world that caused you to start looking for something new?

    Answers from customers, revealing what they were thinking:

    • “My clients started asking questions I couldn’t answer.”
    • "I mainly scraped Twitter and other social media channels.”

    • "We were just looking for a more efficient way to tap into audience insights [compared with our manual process]."

    • “My client was having a hard time finding success with ad targeting strategies.”

    • “A majority of our persona building, audience research, and outreach planning involved far too much subjectivity and guesswork.”

    From those answers, we can tell what customers were likely doing:

    • Pitching to and meeting with clients
    • Manually scraping and mining social media
    • Searching for audience research tools
    • Running ads for clients
    • Extracting terms, hashtags, trending news

    And what they were likely feeling:

    • Frustrated
    • Stressed

    The trick is to read between the lines of customers’ answers. For example, from the statement “My client started asking questions I couldn’t answer,” we know this customer is managing clients, that they’re trying to make clients happy, and that they might feel stressed or frustrated. 

    Repeat this “unpacking” process for all of the questions asked that give insight into what customers with this Job were thinking, doing, and feeling during their Struggle phase.




    Audience research helps you understand:

    • What influences the people you’re trying to reach

    • Who they listen to and trust

    • Where they go when they’re looking for new solutions

    • Other solutions they’re trying, and why those solutions are/aren’t working for them



    Specifically, you need to understand:  

    • What life was like for your customers before they started using your solution
    • What happened that made them realize, “This isn’t working. I need something else” 
    • What they did next, and next, and next, until they found you
    • What led them to choose you over all the other options
    • What value they experienced that convinced them to pay for your solution 
    • What they’re able to do now that they weren’t able to do before
    • What happened next—that is, how they’ve changed and grown as they’ve been your customer


    • Learn from your customers and turn that data into real insight (covered in Part II). You’ll extract their struggles, anxieties, motivations, “aha” moments, and desired outcomes. You’ll take the data you’ve gathered and analyze it to identify your best customers, what they value, and why they chose you (hint: it might not be what you think). 
    • Map and measure your customer’s experience (covered in Part III). You’ll map the actions, touchpoints, motivations, and objections throughout their relationship with you. You’ll know what creates value for your ideal customers and finally measure what matters: that is, the KPIs (key performance indicators) that will tell you you’ve done your job helping customers achieve theirs.
    • Find your biggest levers for growth and build alignment (covered in Part IV). You’ll identify your customer’s success gaps, get clear on how you’ll bridge those gaps, and make shit happen. You’ll finally be able to align your team’s efforts with measurable targets that translate to happier, higher lifetime value customers. 


    Identify Your Best Customers

    Not all customers are created equal. You want to learn from your best: your “pry it from my hands” customers who: 

    • Understand the problem your product solves and have personally struggled with it.
    • Pay for the value your product provides without hesitation.
    • Have an ongoing need for your product (not a one-off use case).
    • Have reached what we call “value realization”—they’ve clearly solved the problem they wanted to solve using your product.
    • Began paying recently enough that they remember what life was like before they found your product (ideally three to six months ago; up to a year ago for some products).

    These are the customers you want to learn from, since these are the customers you want more of. 



    Now that you know how to ask, here’s what we ask:

    • How are you using [product name] day-to-day?
    • When did you first start using [product name]?
    • Okay, so with that timeline in mind, take me back to life before [product name]. Prior to [product name], what were you using instead? If you were using a combination of any tools or products, what were those?
    • Tell me about the moment you realized [old way] wasn’t cutting it. What caused that moment? What compelled you to look for something different?
    • Where did you go to look for new solutions? Did you try anything else before [product name]?
    • How did you find out about [product name]? 
    • Why did you decide to choose [product name] over other options? Can you recall anything that stood out to you?
    • When you signed up for [product name], what happened that made you feel certain it was the right solution for you?
    • Now that you have [product name], what's the number one thing you're able to do that you weren't able to do before? 
    • What do you wish [product name] did that it doesn't do today?



    Questions from your research that give you insight into the Evaluation phase include: 

    • Why did you decide to choose [product name] over other options? Can you recall anything that stood out to you?
    • When you signed up for [product name], what happened that made you feel certain it was the right solution for you?
    • Now that you have [product name], what's the number one thing you're able to do that you weren't before? 

    From these answers, we can tell what customers were likely doing:

    • Going through product tour
    • Running first search
    • Evaluating first search results 
    • Trying different searches types
    • Creating lists
    • Re-running previous search queries and browse results
    • Exporting profile email contacts
    • Comparing audiences
    • Analyzing specific websites and social accounts

    And, feeling:

    • Hopeful
    • Relieved
    • Excited


    When pulling apart feelings—and then their corresponding thinking and doing stickies—the Struggle phase will often break down into at least two milestones: 

    1. A problem milestone where the customer feels frustrated (“This isn’t working”) or stressed (“I shouldn’t be spending so much time doing this”). 
    2. An interest milestone where they see a potential solution and either feel hopeful (“Here’s something that could fix my problem!”) or skeptical (“But is this really going to work for me?”). 


    When pulling apart feelings—and then their corresponding thinking and doing stickies—depending on your customer’s needs, the Growth phase will often be broken down into milestones like: 

    1. Engagement, or Continued Value: where it’s clear that customers have established a habit and your product is embedded into their life.
    2. Expansion, or Value Growth: where customers evolve in their needs, expand their usage, become a “pro,” and/or begin telling others about your solution.

Week 3

Mar 13—Mar 19

    How to Find Problems

    Now that we have our TAM, we need to start exploring where we can find public indications of the problem we solve. DO NOT worry about how to scale this at this point, this step is really just about researching where there are public indicators of pain.


    Here's a video on ways to sniff for public problems.


    There are two approaches to problem sniffing, starting with companies and researching them and then trying to find cohorts of problems using Google or scrapers.


    Examples of ways to sniff for problems:


    Search Engines:

    1. Google: site:g2.com inurl:reviews "doesn't work"

    2. Google: (inurl:careers OR inurl:jobs) "implement SAP"

    3. Google: site:linkedin.com/in "Zapier experience"

    4. Bing: site:linkedin.com/posts "*w" "cold email"

    5. Google: site:salesforce.com filetype:pdf intitle:impact report


    Other Ideas:

    Look at their about page, pricing, help articles, etc.

    Then use tools to learn more about what's below the hood:

    1. BuiltWith.com

    2. SimilarWeb.com

    3. Dataforseo.com

    4. Pagespeed.web.dev

    5. Glassdoor.com

    6. PredictLeads.com (news articles, customers, connections, etc).

    7. Craft.co

    8. Crunchbase.com

    9. Owler.io

    10. Apollo.io

    11. PeopleDataLabs.com

    12. Government databases

    13. Jobs search hacks

    14. Other Google hacks (another one)


    Don't worry about getting stuff at scale, just find great examples and we will help with the scraping.


    You can look in job descriptions too (like "our first sales" to indicate they are hiring early stage sales people). The add or removal of tech with BuiltWith. Changes in headcount with Harmonic.ai or LinkedIn, traffic changes, recent events like Dreamforce, recent raising rounds, key hires, their about page, customer reviews, ask past employees, email customer support, what's going on with their retail locations, data from Yelp or Google Maps, changes in the relationships of your customers.


    There's data everywhere!

    • 📄

      How to Find Problems in Public Data

Week 4

Mar 20—Mar 26

    Copywriting

    https://gamma.app/docs/Cold-Email-The-7-of-why-they-reply-kfyekjxk5bu4arr?mode=doc


    Hi {{first}}

    1. Observation
    2. Insight on your observation
    3. Who are you with social proof and unlike existing customers
    4. Who are your customers with social proof
    5. Verify if they have a problem

    Great messages hit on every one of Dr. Robert Cialdini’s 7 principles of influence

    1. Reciprocation - What can you GIVE them on the first message for free? (This makes them want to give you something back)
    2. Social Proof - Who are you? Who are your customers? What have you done? Why do other people trust you. Tie yourself in with legit brands. Quantify it.
    3. Authority - Why trust you. Why does your entire industry LOOK TO YOU.
    4. Scarcity - What will they LOSE by not replying right away?
    5. Commitment & Consistency - What have they already done in the past that makes them likely to do this (e.g. I see you did X, so you might be interested in Y).
    6. Unity - Why are we in the same group (both founders, both took investment, both have worked at X company, etc). ****
    7. Liking - Just be fun and funny.



    Cialdini's 7 Principles

    1. Reciprocity
    2. Commitment/Consistency
    3. Social Proof
    4. Scarcity
    5. Authority
    6. Liking
    7. Unity

    The 7 👀 email framework

    Subject: Intrigue

    Bait, but not Switch.

    Bad: Your dog's in the hospital

    Good: Woofie's health

    Investigation (can be Unity or Commitment / Consistency)

    The targeting is the message.

    90% of your time should be spent here. Ideally this can speak to consistency, what makes folks most likely to do something they have already done.

    What do you know about them?

    Insight (or Gift - Reciprocity)

    What is your unique insight on the problem. This is your USP. Ideally this showcases, quantifies, and brings into question the path they are about to take / are taking and HOW dangerous that path it.

    Intro (Authority)

    Your buyers have been pitched the same intro from every other {{x}} company, why are you different. "Unlike traditional X companies who do X, we do Y."

    What's a message they have never heard before.

    Including (Social Proof)

    We are trusted by companies that you trust (ideally)

    PredictLeads: "partner", "vendor", "purchaser", "integration", "investor", "holding", "parent", "rebranding", "published_in", "other"

    A MUCH better version of this the smallest atomic community they are a part of and invest in…

    Insane Value / Interested

    This can also be an offer to give more, for free.

    P.S. Irresistible Offer (Scarcity)


Week 5

Mar 27—Apr 2
    Nothing scheduled for this week

Week 6

Apr 3
    Nothing scheduled for this week

Bonus

    What's Changed in B2B Sales in the Last Decade?

    Over the past decade, there have been major changes in B2B sales, making a course like this necessary for you to win against SDR-heavy organizations that will soon no longer rule the world.


    1. Changes in buying behavior: The way that B2B buyers research and make purchasing decisions has changed with sites like G2, Slack networks, and referrals, it's more a buyer's market than ever. t's now more common for buyers to conduct extensive research online before making a purchase, and they may involve multiple decision-makers in the process.
    2. Proliferation of SaaS: You now have tons of cheap competitors, making it much harder for you to stand out.
    3. Cheap contact data: Everyone can find your phone, email, LinkedIn, address, etc... this means that you no longer have a channel advantage, you must have a targeting and data advantage.
    4. More SDRs who are encouraged to spam: SDRs are hired, not trained, and given weaponized data, this means you're competing with an army of people fighting for attention, almost none of which are leading with insights. Sadly, this makes your job with a good product, a good service, and an important insight, MUCH harder.
    5. Company data is now cheap: Data is now critical for you to be able to deliver insights at scale. And you need to be able to create your own dataset as a key advantage.
    6. Tools + PLG are making the bar for sellers much higher: Emerging tools like Testbox.com and Gated.com, along with the rise in PLG all make the sales-led motion much harder to pull off today than it used to be.
    7. Intent data sucks: The latest craze, intent data, is opaque, it's voodoo sauce. You can't control it. You don't know who is searching, you don't know their need, you don't even know how accurate it is. It's a bad way to look at the world. It also gives you nothing good to say when going to market.
    8. Email deliverability is getting harder: Google and Microsoft are getting amazing at detecting spam, tanking open rates to dip below 10-20%. This means 8/10 of your messages will never get seen.
    9. Changing economic conditions: The era of free money to grow at all costs is now over. You need to grow with systems, not with people.


    You'll learn now only how to address these trends, but how you can thrive in a world where More SDRs ≠ Growth.


    Onboarding Process (will be in a form)

    1. Define your TAM. Like this... https://youtu.be/VOZPDkcDV9Q
    2. A Sales Nav Link
    3. An Apollo Link
    4. Maybe their main criteria outlined.
    5. Define your Personas.
    6. This should be a single spreadsheet where they have a list of inclusion and exclusion titles + seniorities.
    7. Basically like they can put an X for "VPs" and we should already have all the title variations of VPs (like head, chief, etc).
    8. Define your Offers.
    9. What can they give away, for free. What's SO valuable that people will respond. No one wants to read a whitepaper... so no PDFs here... just like raw value.
    10. Document Past Channels and Campaign Performance.
    11. What channels and messaging worked before? What didn't? What is working now?
    12. Discover Communities.
    13. Links to key communities of users / interest groups online (e.g. LinkedIn, etc).
    14. Discover Pain.
    15. Video recording of their most knowledgeable person looking through 20 domains and showing us what they find when they do manual research.
    16. Documenting what's above.
    17. The main question here is how can you find problems and structure that. like tis: https://youtu.be/5GSOPTR7tao
    18. Define Messaging. https://youtu.be/RqBBsi8dH28
    19. Offers
    20. Social proof
    21. Outcomes, proof of problems
    22. Value to provide
    23. What's worked before...
    24. Exclude
    25. Spreadsheet of people, companies, and competitors to exclude.
    26. Consider? an Anti-TAM (e.g. companies we should never reach out to).
    27. Evergreen plays
    28. e.g. job changers


Course schedule

3-5 hours per week

  • 8 Weeks of The Mondays

    1:00pm - 2:00pm Pacific

    Each week we teach a 30 minute course on the topic and have 30 minutes for Q&A, over 8 weeks.

  • Friday AM Office Hours

    1 Hour Friday 9am to 10am Pacific

    Fridays are office hours for you to come in and ask questions

  • Weekly projects

    2 hours per week

    Each week you'll have homework that will take you about 2 hours a week to complete. It may take some much longer, depending on how well you know your customer. If building a repeatable lead gen process isn't your primary goal, DO NOT SIGN UP!

Hard Setup Costs (~$4k - in Addition to Course Fee)

Hard Setup Costs (~$4k - in Addition to Course Fee)

Email Setup Costs: $523

It's about $523 per year to send the 15,000k emails in this course, and then you'll have the infrastructure to keep sending. You must be prepared to pay these fees yourself.

Data Costs: $1,000 - $3,000

Data costs depend on your needs. But, for the most part, we have ways for you to get the best in class data for 1/100th market rates. Expect to spend, in total $4,000 in the next quarter on data.


We don't mark up the data or make any commissions on your purchases.

Bad Joke Fees: ∞Patience

Jordan makes a lot of bad jokes, it won't cost you any cash outside of the course fee to listen to them... but it will be very painful. So you may need to budget for an extra beer, vape juice, or some more yoga sessions. Plan accordingly.

Sales Doesn't Have to Feel Like This! Learn With Others, Have Fun!

Sales Doesn't Have to Feel Like This! Learn With Others, Have Fun!

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects. You'll all be learning a better way than hiring thousands of SDRs to cold call your whole market.

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams. We'll work with you to score your entire market.

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you. You'll create and share tactics with other top founders and GTM leaders to learn from us AND from them.

Frequently Asked Questions