- Let's face it,
we all absolutely hate receiving cold calls
and cold emails and spam emails,
we hate it,
it's the worst.
But as SaaS founders, as SaaS business owners,
when we were looking to drive growth,
outbound is a necessary evil,
and when done right, when you do it effectively,
it is the number one engine for driving growth
for your SaaS business.
So in this episode,
I'm gonna dig into the three principles
that you can adopt right now
to actually make sure your outbound strategy is effective,
doesn't piss people off and actually helps you grow faster.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up, everybody.
Welcome to Unstoppable.
I'm TK.
And on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
If you are new to this channel, welcome,
be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
because I drop an episode like this
with actionable strategies in growing your SaaS business
three times a week with the TK energy.
Also, if you are part of
my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program,
if you're part of this community, welcome back,
it is really great to see you over here.
Now I'll never forget the best cold call, not an email,
and we'll get into emails in just a second,
but the principles are the same.
The best cold call I ever got,
I don't even know why I answered the phone,
but it was on my cell phone,
I was running ToutApp,
I was CEO at the time.
And I got this call
and I just picked it up
and really quickly it was like,
I forget the guy's name, he was like, "Hey, this is John",
let's just call him John,
"TK, first of all, congratulations
on raising your latest round of funding,
also, congratulations on hiring a VP of sales.
I specialize in hiring VPs of marketing,
is that next on your priority list?
If so, can we set up a time to chat?"
And literally on the phone I'm like,
I literally cannot make up an excuse
to not take a meeting with this person because
he's done the research,
he's absolutely right, I raised a round of funding,
we hired our VP of sales
and we were looking at a VP of marketing next.
Fun fact, we never in the lifetime of ToutApp
never had a VP of marketing,
we never got to hiring one
but that's for another episode.
But in that call, he was spot on
and in that call,
it was the best cold call slash cold email,
cold outreach I ever received.
And it's because of these three principles.
He followed three key principles that you need to follow
for every outbound email or phone call
or LinkedIn DM that you do
to drive outbound for your SaaS business.
So if you're excited to dig into the three principles
and understand why that was so good, even though,
you can probably feel that was so relevant,
but how do you repeat that,
how do you make sure you follow the principle,
so do that for your own outbound calls.
If you're excited to get into that,
go and smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm
and let's jump into principle number one.
So principle number one is it was timely, all right?
Your outbound emails and phone calls need to be timely.
There needs to be some sort of trigger,
that's internal to the company,
there needs to be some macro trend that's happening,
or it needs to be some sort of unique opportunity
that is time-bound, so I it's like,
"Hey, I had to call you right now".
Now he did the research,
he knew that I raised a round of funding, that's a trigger.
He knew I hired a VP of sales, that's another trigger.
And he did the math and said,
well, VP of marketing is probably next, logically.
And he put that up front and he said,
hey, this is timely because he did these three things.
And it also shows me that he did his research
right in that moment.
It wasn't just some, hey, TK could start the call
or the email with, hey, I help recruit VPs of marketing,
you may be interested,
but he got a lot more specific than that.
He said, "You raised funding, you got the VP of sales,
you're gonna need a VP of marketing,
and that's what I specialize in,
I'm your guy, let's go, let's talk".
So principle number one is it's gotta be timely.
And by the way, I'm gonna give you this three principles,
and then right over here, I have an example of a bad email
and a recent cold email that I would give a B+, A-,
where it's impossible to get an A+
cause it's still cold emails and everyone hates them.
But B+ is as good of a grade as you can get, I think.
Okay, so that's principle number one.
Principle number two is it needs to be, personalized.
You have to be specific. It has to be about me.
And at the end of the day,
you gotta stroke the ego a little bit,
the best outbound emails find a classy way
to stroke the ego.
Now I'm not talking about,
everyone's gotten those really crappy LinkedIn DMS.
Like, Hey, it looks like you're doing some exciting things
at blah, blah, blah, company name.
Congratulations on that (chatters)
It's like, I call bulshit.
You can call bulshit.
That's bulshit.
But if you are personalizing,
like the fact that in that cold call,
John actually knew I raised money.
He knew I hired a VP of sales.
That is very, very personalized, right
it's specific.
It's actually stroking my ego. It's about me.
And naturally you're gonna pay a little bit more attention.
So principle number two is it has to be personalized.
I have number three, but before I go to number three,
lemme just pause here for a second.
If you're starting to see how,
just by these two principles,
you can actually transform your outbound emails,
your outbound calls.
Can I just get a yes in the comments below
also smash that like button if you haven't already
for the YouTube algorithm
also, if you are building out your outbound strategy,
if you're essentially building a Go-To-Market machine
for your SaaS business to drive growth faster,
and you want the cheat codes,
you want a framework to follow,
be sure to check out my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program.
I'll tell you more about that all the way at the end,
but let's go to principle number three.
Principle number three is
you need to have a clear call to action.
A lot of times I'll get an email
and they'll just be like (chatters) word vomit.
And it's like, I don't know what to do with this
so archive.
A lot of times I'll get it.
And there'll be like click here to book a time with me.
So the important thing to understand is
for a clear call to action.
You also have to communicate
like what's in it for the reader.
What do they get if they click that button, book that call?
So a lot of times I'll get like,
Hey, do you have time for a quick 15 to chat about this?
I'm like, no, like I don't have 15 minutes for anything.
However,
if it's for something that's super important to me
and I'm gonna get value from it,
I will have an hour for you.
I will have 30 minutes for you.
15 minutes is not worth my time for anything
cause it's probably going to be a waste of time,
which is why I always say
have a clear call to action
and articulate what's in it for me
if I take that call to action.
So those are the three principles.
Right now we're gonna dig into the example of the emails.
Number one, it needs to be timely.
Number two, it needs to be personalized.
And number three, you need to have a clear call to action.
So based on these three principles,
I'll place them right here.
Here's an example of just a bad email.
So I literally got this.
This has worked out well,
cause I was only gonna show you the good example,
the great example,
but I just got this while I was filming this.
And so the subject was process outsourcing market (chatters)
And I'll be honest, like if it's in my inbox, I'm like,
I'll click on it. Like, I don't know why,
but I'll quickly archive.
I use superhumans so I can quickly archive it.
And I looked at it and over here,
it's hello Kendokar Kader,
It's like not even my first name,
I don't even go back on Kendokar Kader.
Kendokar is
It's like, it's not it
this is completely BS.
And then said, would you be interested
in building the business website and mobile application?
We are professional web and app.
It's like all about them.
We are this, we have 10 years,
everyone's got 10 years of experience and more,
if you're interested,
do let me know something about your business
and contact details and I'll provide you more information.
I'm like, what do I?
And also this is from Rosa Maria,
but it was from Rena,
like super confusing.
This is obviously bad.
And I wanted to start with this because
your emails are probably not this bad.
Like this is clearly like just terrible
and probably just more spam than anything else.
And I don't know what the economics are behind this,
but it still highlights how easy it is
to just hit the send button on a thousand emails
and just hope for something back.
And what ends up happening is you ban your brand.
In this case, it's not clear what the company is.
They go to spam.
Their domain is going to be banned.
But at the same time, if you are sending emails like this,
where it's all about you, it's not personalized.
It's not timely. There's no clear call to action.
There's no clear call to action.
And I'm like, what am I interested in?
I have no idea what I'm interested in.
It just doesn't work. Right?
So now let's go into a good email.
So here's the thing you got to understand.
There's gonna be lots of tactics on writing cold emails.
In fact, if you search on YouTube,
there's some whole bunch of people that have done videos
on cold emailing, right?
And they have different tactics,
the strategy and the principles don't change.
They need to be timely.
They need to be personalized.
You need to have a clear call to action.
But your job and your team's job
is to come up with compelling ways to interrupt patterns.
Because once a certain tactic gets overplayed,
I remember there's tactic of like,
have you been overrun by a bear? Should I send help?
Like I remember that was a big thing back in like 2015,
but enough people started using it and then stopped working.
But in the beginning it worked.
Those are just tactics.
They're not the thing.
But if you truly get personalized and truly engage,
then it'll work
then you'll interrupt their patterns
cause they won't recognize,
Oh, they're using this email
looks like 50 other cold emails I've gotten
they're using the same tactic.
But if you truly engage and you truly connect with them
and it looks different then
my BS meter will be down actually.
I won't be like, Oh my God, it's probably a cold email.
I'll look and I'm like, Oh, this looks like a real email.
Lemme read it.
This is why a B + is as high of a grade
as I'll give to any cold email
because it's impossible to get better than this, honestly.
And this one was great.
It interrupted my patterns.
It followed all these principles,
but it also interrupted my patterns.
So first one you'll notice it's two pages the email.
It is literally two pages,
but this email got a response from me and I'll explain why.
It's two pages,
but it's two pages of someone
that put a lot of effort into writing this email.
It was super personalized.
So you'll notice is it's basically says,
I don't wanna use red on this one let's use green.
It basically says greetings from Ireland.
So I'll read that and I'm like, okay, cool.
He introduces himself and what they do and you know
it sounds tangentially involved in what we're doing.
So I'm like, cool tell me more.
And the reason for this is
it doesn't feel or look like any cold email
that I've gotten. Right?
He's just having a conversation with me.
He's building this relationship with me.
So often you'll write a cold email,
trying to close the deal on that first email.
You're like, they're gonna read this email.
They're gonna book that meeting. There'll be great.
It's gonna be amazing.
It never works that way.
You gotta build a relationship, right?
And so he just like, Hey, this is who I am.
Here's what we're about.
I know you're extremely busy
so I'll keep this short and sweet.
He kinda lied,
but I mean, I guess it's short, but you know,
but it was value, I didn't care.
I'm like, cool.
So then this guy, it was amazing.
Like he, all of this,
all of this is completely personalized to me.
He watched specific, I get a lot of like DMS, like,
Hey, congrats on the YouTube channel. That's great.
They didn't watch shit, like I know it.
They're not SaaS founders.
They didn't watch any of the videos. They're lying.
Archive block, delete, spam.
This guy,
he went in and he actually watched an actual video.
He talked about, he enjoyed it.
He talks about why he enjoyed it.
He connects it to his own journey.
He talks about a very specific thing.
I mentioned towards the end of the video.
This guy, I read this
it stroke my ego.
Is specific to me, but also I'm like,
I'll give this guy five minutes. This is awesome.
Like he actually cares.
And ultimately,
no matter how busy we are,
if there's a human that truly cares
and they're looking to provide value,
I'll give them five seconds more
to be the rest of the email.
And so it was like super personalized.
I would say this is also timely
because we're just now hitting the point in the business
and the channel where we are getting
a lot of partnership opportunities.
And generally speaking,
we don't do any sponsored posts.
This is not a sponsored post.
This is clearly me critiquing their cold email,
but we're getting that.
So it is timely because we're hitting that inflection point
in the growth of the channel, thanks to you guys, honestly.
So this was super personalized.
Then he goes into, alright, look,
here's a way for us to work together.
Lemme just explain what we do
and they actually add some social proof, they explain.
Now most cold emails,
try to say how awesome they are like over here.
And I'm already tuned out. I'm like, I don't care.
But he spent built some time building some trust
and really stroking my ego and showing that he cares.
And he's like,
I'm here to just build a relationship.
And he looked at all this,
and then he goes into like, here's what we do.
And he knows exactly how to get my attention
cause he said we're part of the two comma club.
We use Click Funnels.
I'm like, we were on the same platform.
I know what two comma club is.
And so he explains all that
and he gives a bunch of social proofs
on how they've helped their customers.
And then he went in for the call to action
and said, okay, this like, literally I care.
Here's personalized to you.
Here's why it's relevant to you.
Two, here's what we do.
And here's why we're legit.
And three, here's how we could work together.
It could be beneficial.
And by the way, he was like pretty forthcoming.
Like you can tell this guy is in the long game
in the relationship game,
we're gonna do business together, one way or another
I know it.
And he basically was like,
whenever it works better for you, lemme know.
And by the way,
if this really isn't a fit for you right now,
just let me know and I won't follow up.
Like, this is great.
This is awesome.
This is a human being that's actually reaching out to you.
And also in here,
I don't wanna go into too many details,
but he goes into some rebuttals.
Like he literally, like, you can tell
he knows what's going through my head.
I'm like, I don't know.
So their thing is Amazon FBA.
I'm like, I don't know
I have SaaS founders.
They don't wanna do anything with Amazon FBA.
We actually have a really great founder
in the Go-To-Market coaching program
that serves that community.
But like generally speaking, we don't wanna talk about,
we build software companies not Amazon FBA businesses.
So he totally said like,
Hey, by the way you might be saying,
that's not for you and for your audience,
but you'd be surprised.
You'd be surprised why it's relevant
and I can tell you more about that.
And I was like, Oh, okay
so he knows this.
This is not a bunch of BS.
This is an example.
This does not look like any other cold email,
but it interrupted my pattern.
I looked at it, I'm like this doesn't look like
a blasted, spammy, cold email.
This guy cares. He went into it.
So obviously we talked,
there's some emails here
and I said, hey look, man
I'm not doing sponsored videos.
I just don't do sponsored videos.
We make plenty of money
on our SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program.
And that's what we're really about.
But I wanna use your email for my next episode,
because I'm talking about cold emailing.
So anyway, I think I've gone long enough.
I think we can close here.
Three principles for cold emails.
This is the best cold call I ever got was timely, right.
It was very relevant.
It was a clear trigger or macro trend
or unique opportunity that they were tapping into.
It was personalized.
They really understood me.
And they reached out for a very specific reason
and was a clear call to action.
They asked me to do something
where I knew what I would get in return.
And it was the same with this guy.
It was awesome. Dean, over here.
If you are interested in Amazon FBA
so again, this is not sponsored
I'm not endorsing it,
but if you're interested in what they do,
I'll link to it below so you can check it out as well.
If you got value from this video,
be sure to smash that like button, if you haven't already,
I drop a video like this three times a week
to help you grow your SaaS business.
So be sure that the subscribe button and that bell icon,
if you have a friend,
a co-founder another fellow SAS founder,
if you're part of a group,
please share this video
it will mean the world to me and my team,
we put a lot of effort into these videos.
And also if you are building a SaaS business
and you're growing it
and you want a framework to follow to scale it faster
to build a scalable Go-To-Market machine,
then I invite you to check out
my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program.
Inside that coaching program,
I work with you and give you the exact framework to follow,
to actually drive growth for your SaaS business.
It pulls together a lot of the loose components
I share publicly in this YouTube videos,
but inside the program,
we tell you exactly what to do step-by-step
and how to do it.
So if you're interested in that,
I invite you to book a strategy call with me,
just go to TKkADER.COM/GTM
you'll get details around the program
and you get a little link
to book a strategy call with me.
On the strategy call
we'll talk through where you are in your business
and see if we can help you.
You'll walk away with at least one great growth idea.
And if you're a great fit,
you can join my SaaS Go-To-Market coaching program.
We also have testimonials flowing in
on success stories for the program.
So if you're interested in learning more about that
book that call and I'll give you access to the
testimonial videos as well.
So you can check that out.
I think we covered enough.
We've gone long enough.
I wanna thank you for watching this video.
And remember, everyone needs a strategy for their life
and their business,
but when you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK and I'll see you the next episode.
(upbeat music)