I met with a colleague that showed me a highly personalised outreach document he uses to cold-connect with high-value prospects. I was so impressed that I wanted to analyse the document so that it could be replicated by you. I didn't think it was fair to share the original document, because it's not mine to share. However, what I have done is created a wireframe of the document to try and capture the format, and done a page-by-page assessment of each page - I hope it's helpful.
Analysis of High-Quality Cold Outreach Document
The document is created speculatively to create a high-impact cold opener where no other warm open doors are available.
The time required to research and construct this document was described as 1-2 days work. The economics of creating such a document mean that it only makes sense to invest such time when.
The ticket values are in the hundreds of thousands or greater. Hence this is an ‘enterprise sale’ technique and not suitable for SMB or other low-value SaaS ticket items
It also suits businesses where the size of the TAM is low, and therefore additional focus on quality is important because the business or rep can not simply ‘turn-the-page’ and dial into another list of accounts.
Title Page
The title raises a question, and one that the prospect is likely to be asking themselves. By positioning it as a question, rather than a statement, it demonstrates an unbiased approach. It then concludes with a very open “Lets discuss…” invitation. This makes it very clear that there is an invite without being too ‘needy’,
Quick Intro to Exec
I particularly like that the first step is to establish the credibility of the author, not the vendors business. Most businesses lead any sales or marketing materials with a battery of customer logos to establish social proof. The author lists their individual domain expertise and awareness of key business issues of the target client. Hence this is not a generic ‘resume’ but highly personalised to the target business in question.
The image used is a professional quality headshot and it a perfect companion to the text in anchoring the credibility of the expert Account Executive to a humanising but professional image.
Primary Page
This is the main piece of content. The page is text heavy and split into 2 large sections
Left Section: Makes a set of factual observations regarding the target business inclding challenges they will be facing currently, and wider industry developments. This commentary lays the groundwork but doesn’t include any explicit opinion.
Right Section: The author immediately comes off-the-fence and highlights their opinions about certain developments and their potential impact on the prospect, highlighting uncomfortable outcomes such as overspending budget or vendor lock-in associated with specific partners the target is already dealing with.
Left Column Analysis
Reference knowledge of [prospect] supplier landscape, including dates of adoption. This is a critical starting point because it shows that any opinion that follows is based on an understanding of their situation, rather than the typical tech vendor leading with their proposition without anything to suggest the ‘fit’ or ‘timing’ has been considered.
Builds personal credibility: Acknowledge some of the challenges not just of the domain, but also the specific area that the prospect operates in. In this example, it’s a grocery provider, rather than just a generic reference to e-commerce. The author cites specific examples of the challenges in this category, further cementing their expertise and establishing that the prospect will be able - should they choose - to have an intelligent conversation at a peer level.
Introducing Change: There is a very savvy reference to the [competitor] being an acknowledged solid provider, but that post-COVID many customers have found an aspect of their commercial model a source of challenge. It’s important to be able to point to pain, or areas that might not be ideal, without wholesale slagging down the competitor - which is never a good look. Probe for pain, but maintain a respectful and professional tone when speaking about competitors at all times.
Domain Change: The author highlights significant areas of technology strategy change following the time of the original implementation of the competitor solution back in 2017, citing both trends (in this case MACH architectures) and also a number of vendors leading this new wave of change. This achieves two things; naming the avant-guard establishes the author as being part of this movement, and the deliberate omission of the current suppliers name suggests that they are becoming legacy, without doing so explicitly.
Assumptive Offer: “As you may be contemplating the industry's technology landscape we would love to share an opinion or two’. The implication, of course, if the potential for replatforming or removing the competitor, but this doesn’t need to be stated explicitly - the prospect will obviously infer this but the offer is soft. I.e its suggesting a no-commitment exchange of thought leadership, rather than diving straight into a vendor displacement conversation.
Right Column Analysis
Jumps into being far more pokey around potential pain points specific to the vendor. In a series of bullet points the author highlights 3 specific potential pains.
Monolithic Architecture: Suggestions of reduced technology flexibility and business agility
Commercial Pricing Issues: Specific reference to how the vendor is known to price. It doesn’t go as far as saying that they are unreasonably expensive, but draws attention to the pricing mechanism and notes that this regularly results in clients being billed for more than they needed.
Instability Risk: Author points to the likelihood that an upgrade of their current technology will probably require a costly upgrade and a requirement to rebuilt their platform. The suggestion (implicit) is that this is an opportune time to consider newer technologies, since they would face a large programme of work even if they choose to stay on old technology.
Summary with credentials: The final bullet points is a set of more typical generic industry credentials for their business, stating their credentials to help the prospect navigate the situation, if they felt that review was something they wish to consider.
How can we help
A series of 4 pillars outlining the core offering of your company. In the example, the business is a services business. However, for a technology vendor, instead of directly referring to a portfolio of technology products, it might be more effective to outline a series of workshops of other value-building engagements.
This is the area of the document that becomes more generic
Social Proof
A series of more traditional logos of partners and customers. While I would consider this more generic in terms of marketing material approach compared to the earlier, highly personalised part of the document, social proof and references are a core part of how buyers appraise potential suppliers and so it probably is appropriate to include this without going over the top. The risk is always there that, having built credibility with an unusual approach, we undo the work by returning to type.
Delivery In Email Body
The document in question still needs to be delivered to the target audience, and probably the best channel will be email. However, target buyers' inboxes are constantly under siege. Consideration needs to be given to both the body of text and title of the email to reduce the chance that it is dismissed as normal marketing SPAM.
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