Prospecting at scale without compromising personalization (Alan Shen, Data Account Executive @ Pave)

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1. 3:25

   We start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways. So let's get your three. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having me. So the first one is use the 80-20 rule to focus on the right accounts. Certain accounts in your book have better ROI than others. For example, a closed loss account, which is an account you've engaged in a previous “sales cycle with, it's more likely to get them to re-engage with you in conversation” compared to a net new account, a completely new account that you've never heard of before or they've never heard of you before. So what to do here is bucket the different types of accounts and prioritize them based on ROI. For example, tier one closed loss, tier two, previous meeting you've met with them in the past. Tier three, they have given you a warm response through email or phone and work through them based on that priority.

   In Not now and re-engagement

2. 5:46

   history with us essentially, and breaking that down into 3 buckets. First is closed loss, which is you've had long term conversations, multiple calls, second previous meeting, you've met with them once or twice in the past, and third is any time somebody has responded to you by email or phone. I would categorize it that way, look through Salesforce, create a report to find folks “that fit those categories and work through them in that order.” So Alan, we've found 5 accounts, whether they're closed loss, previous warm responses, previous meetings, whatever, but we have 5 accounts in our hands, and now we actually want to start tearing apart each of those accounts. How do we go about doing that? What are we looking for? The first thing to look for is really just disqualifying any accounts that you don't want to waste any of your time on, right?

   In Account selection and tiering

3. 6:21

   How do we go about doing that? What are we looking for? The first thing to look for is really just disqualifying any accounts that you don't want to waste any of your time on, right? There's plenty of accounts you see that is HQ'd in San Francisco, but half their employees are international, which may not fit your ICP, may not be the type of account that your company and your team wants to go after. “Get rid of those accounts up front.” Get rid of everything that may not be extremely relevant or even remotely relevant to what you're trying to do. Again, spend the time on the 20% of accounts that are going to yield 80% of the results in your final book. Alan, one of the things that I have learned from Armand over the years is when you're

   In Disqualification

4. 6:21

   How do we go about doing that? What are we looking for? The first thing to look for is really just disqualifying any accounts that you don't want to waste any of your time on, right? There's plenty of accounts you see that is HQ'd in San Francisco, but half their employees are international, which may not fit your ICP, may not be the type of account that your company and your team wants to go after. “Get rid of those accounts up front.” Get rid of everything that may not be extremely relevant or even remotely relevant to what you're trying to do. Again, spend the time on the 20% of accounts that are going to yield 80% of the results in your final book. Alan, one of the things that I have learned from Armand over the years is when you're

   In Disqualification criteria

5. 7:32

   so that you can start finding contacts and sequencing and either getting in or getting out with that account? The first thing to do is not to do all 500 at once. I think I fell into that trap previously where I'm trying to tear and research from all my accounts all in one go, and I think that definitely is not the way to do it. “You just not have enough time to actually do the outreach you need.” Typically, the way I would like to do it is I'm splitting up 25 accounts to 50 accounts every single week, and the things I'm looking for are specific triggers that I've found that I've worked previously in the past when it comes to responses, so customizations on things like how fast are they growing, are they hiring a lot of people, are they the

   In Account research timeboxing

6. 14:46

   So a sentence like that, you can throw in any VC and it'll still make sense, right? Later on, a part of the email is, hey, and given that your account name has X percent growth last year, I can only imagine all the comp and cap table reports you'll be forced to pull into 47 different spreadsheets on your next merit cycle. Again, any number you throw into that X will work, no matter what number that is. “So creating generalized enough messaging where it still feels customized is sort of the way” to go about it. And then my question here is, okay, so this sounds like it's probably a very early email in the process. What is your process for, okay they don't respond to that email and then you call them a couple days later and you get deeper and deeper in the sequence. Do you

   In Scalable personalization

7. 15:34

   then defer just to auto emails that are more generalized and don't have specific information there? What does that almost decay curve of personalization look like for you? I think typically the decay curve does seem to kick in later on in the sequence, but there are still instances where I still want to use the “So for example, it would be cold calling, right?” When I'm cold calling someone, I have my outreach first emails open. So if in the case that they pick up the call and I am giving them, and I've gone to the pitch right, cold call opener, all sorted, can I borrow 27 seconds, all good to go. I'm weaving in different points of customization. I'm saying, hey look, you

   In Call-script personalization

8. 21:16

   But oftentimes, what will happen is a prospect won't put their full last name on their LinkedIn page. So for example, it would be Alan S. And one trick that I found out there was if you really notice in the URL section, sometimes they will put their full sort of username there. And oftentimes, that includes their last name. “So if the email that you need to reach out to is first.last, there you go.” You just found their last name to sort of utilize there. Zoom info has intense scoring, right? So for some magical reason, they have a really interesting way. You can find out whether or not someone's been looking to you. And using that, again, as signal to figure out whether or not this account is, one, interested in you. Two, if they exist, if they don't exist in your Salesforce account, grab that and just work it.

   In Contact enrichment

9. 22:15

   There are so many things going on in your day. Could you give me a sense of how do you structure your day every single day as an SDR? Staying consistent, that was a big part of what I think will sort of help me just achieve better results. And so the way that would look like is I will split it down into “in the whole week format is Monday and Wednesdays would be the research and tiering days.” Tuesdays and Thursdays would be the days I'm sequencing. And Wednesday slash Friday would be the days that I'm actually sending things out. And so consistently, if I'm doing 50 accounts a week, on Monday, I'm doing 25 accounts. In the afternoons, I'm researching and tiering. I'm getting everybody's right emails and getting ready for them to ship into outreach.

   In Account research timeboxing

10. 23:22

    Yeah, great question. No. So the big part of that I didn't mention would be the outbounding. So for example, in the mornings, I like to maintain that as cold calls, right? That's another thing that I think Armand and the team taught me really well was be consistent. If you're doing $200 a week, do $40 a day. So there's a similar block in my mornings where it's like 10 to 11 typically or 9 to “11 where I'm just cold calling.” And every time I have meetings or anything else, it gets slotted between those big time blocks. And in afternoons, I always want to maintain and keep that research and tiering block there as well. And it's become a really good habit because I think sometimes when, look, we all fall behind sometimes, right? And it's a Tuesday or Wednesday and I'm like, oh, I mentally know now I should have

    In Call block structure

11. 23:59

    had already 30 account sequence ready to go, but I've only have 15. So I need to set up and get to that number. So that way I know I'm hitting my weekly goal. And that mini goal aspect of it has been really helpful. So just to play this back, how you're planning your week. Each day, you're doing a little bit of outbound, right? “So a little bit of cold calling every single day, oftentimes in the morning.” But every day you are taking sort of the non-golden tasks of account research, sequencing, what have you. And you're breaking those into different activities across different days. So on your first day, it might be finding 25 accounts. On Tuesday, it's researching 25 accounts.

    In Best days and times to cold call