Podcast episode
How to Turn Cold Outreach Into Real Conversations | Adia Toll
30 Minutes to President's Club23 Apr 202636 min
Description
In this episode we take how Adia Toll engineered a 72% reply rate by shifting from pitch-first selling to conversation-first prospecting and the exact systems behind it. ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS: Grind → optimize → automate (GOAT framework): Manually run your entire outbound motion first, then optimize each step before automating so you scale what actually works. Focus on one metric at a time: Pick a single KPI (like reply rate), reverse engineer it, and ignore everything else until you 10x it. Prioritize conversations over meetings: Start simple, human back-and-forth dialogue first—meetings come easier once rapport is built. Don’t scale bad outbound: Avoid “spray and pray” automation—optimize for quality conversations, not activity volume. ADIA'S PATH TO PRESIDENT'S CLUB: First Sales Hire at AskElephant 150-250% of Annual Quota as a rep. SDR to SDR Manager to Head of Sales Development in 4 years These Courses Will Get You to President’s Club: 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training Cold Call Course: https://bit.ly/4jqQ4w2 Cold Email Course: http://bit.ly/44K6jy3 Discovery Course: https://bit.ly/4cQYaM8 Exec Selling Course: https://bit.ly/4lCtJh7 Leadership Course: https://bit.ly/4o8KtMT Get More Tactics: Free Toolkits: http://bit.ly/4nZwvO5 Join our weekly newsletter – https://hubs.li/Q02NJQ8p0 Things you can steal and use today – https://linktr.ee/30mpc_youtube
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I'm not trying to dig for a ton of information about them. I'm not going, hey, I saw you grew up in Salt Lake City. Tell me more about that. That feels awkward. I know I'm about to be pitched. Something about generalizing it can actually be easier to respond to. And I'm not going in with a super deep question. I'm not giving them work to do. I'm making it very easy to respond. “If they don't give me an opening, normally I'm going to ask them something like, hey,” tell me about 30 MPC. What do you guys do? And as you guys know, the polite thing to do after I ask that question is for you to go, so tell me about Ask Elephant. What do you guys do? No, I have an opening to pitch. And if this doesn't actually go into a pitch, that's fine, because that's when I cold call you. And now I know you're going to talk to me because you've been talking to me on LinkedIn.
That's going to be something I think about. What about email? Wow. There's variables around them responding to the email that I can go and look for. Their title. Is a sales manager more likely to respond than a director? Is the director more likely to respond than a VP or vice versa? Who is the most likely to reply person? And each of my target industries. “the industry segments that we target and how” those different industries convert, and I'm breaking that down. So that's all account. That's person. Next we have the, what to say. All right. When I talk to people, what am I saying? That has the highest rate of conversion and I'm optimizing that step. Next is the channel. When I talk to them in these different places, what has the highest conversion? Each of those are metrics that I can go and measure for each of these steps.
Who is the most likely to reply person? And each of my target industries. So now I'm thinking about the, like the industry segments that we target and how those different industries convert, and I'm breaking that down. So that's all account. That's person. Next we have the, what to say. All right. When I talk to people, what am I saying? That has the highest rate of conversion and I'm optimizing that step. Next is the channel. “When I talk to them in these different places, what has the highest conversion?” Each of those are metrics that I can go and measure for each of these steps. I'm going to maximize all of these. Now I can go through and automate it so I can automate finding the accounts, I can automate finding the people. I can even build automations that draft the messages for me so that I can go and send them and I can go and edit them. I can automate the process of going and figuring out where I should reach out to
okay, let me just go and do an outbound system and let me just go and automate things because we're excited. You do have to earn the right to automate. What channels are working best for you? What are working worst? So the phones are always going to be awesome. We love the phones. It's the best way to have a back and forth that like, you would definitely have a back and forth if you can get somebody on the phone, right? “Outside of that, LinkedIn is going to have our highest conversion rate.” LinkedIn is where we have the 72% conversion rate. On the phones, we only have about a 15% pickup rate, which is actually very decent for industry standard and our meeting to conversion or conversation to conversion rate on the phones is about 35 to 40%, depending on the rat, which
But if your reps are doing this, they're also not coming straight out with a pitch slap that ends with a CTA of like, hey, can I get 30 minutes next Tuesday afternoon? It sounds like it's a lot more conversational. So you kind of get the best of both worlds, which I would assume is a big part of why your response rate is so high on these conversations. “It's easier to respond to us if you're engaged with us already on LinkedIn.” So we talk about sphere of influence and building some rapport first. And the other thing I tell my reps is if somebody is not active on LinkedIn, they're not engaging, there's zero interest there. It's OK to just directly pitch. But the way that the reason that people don't like pitch slaps is because you can tell it's completely automated. It wasn't written for you. It's very generalized.
And the other thing I tell my reps is if somebody is not active on LinkedIn, they're not engaging, there's zero interest there. It's OK to just directly pitch. But the way that the reason that people don't like pitch slaps is because you can tell it's completely automated. It wasn't written for you. It's very generalized. And so if you can make it sound a little bit more human. And it's going to be much easier. “The other thing to do is if they're not on LinkedIn, use it to empower a different channel.” So if they're not on LinkedIn, calls are probably going to be a better option to use LinkedIn to just be like, hey, is this your phone number? OK, can I call you on four? Now that's way easier to respond to. And I'm just using it to empower a channel that I have a higher rate of getting a reply on. They're more likely to convert. Really good. Adia, you've got so much good stuff, but the clock is tick, tick, ticking.
And so if you can make it sound a little bit more human. And it's going to be much easier. The other thing to do is if they're not on LinkedIn, use it to empower a different channel. So if they're not on LinkedIn, calls are probably going to be a better option to use LinkedIn to just be like, hey, is this your phone number? OK, can I call you on four? Now that's way easier to respond to. “I'm just using it to empower a channel that I have a higher rate of getting a reply on. They're more likely to convert.” Really good. Adia, you've got so much good stuff, but the clock is tick, tick, ticking. And so we got to move to the Nick, Nick, Nickens final question, which is never said that before. Talks about a lot of best practices for salespeople to follow. Now I got to flip it on its head and ask you the final question, which is about a worst practice. So last question is what is.
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