How to Turn Cold Emails into GOLDEN Opportunities

Your business outreach is failing because you're treating relationships like chores instead of treasures. Sending tons of generic emails to important decision makers makes people feel like numbers, not humans. And that approach costs you way more than missed guests. It costs you real opportunities. In this coaching session, we learned that making each message personal and caring about the connection first is how you win. Spend time understanding who you're talking to, give them value right away, And never rush the relationship. Treat people like gold and you'll find doors opening instead of slamming shut. If you've been here before, drop a hashtag #believe in the comments so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time.

So Nikhil has been a member of Movie Makers. As part of that, we're doing this. Give a little context what you're doing, show your, your, your business, a show, et cetera. And then we'll dive in.

The company that I'm running is called Ultimate QA. We specialize in doing automated software testing, which basically allows organizations that are developing some kind of software. We help them to write code that will ultimately help them to release higher quality software faster and cheaper. And so it's using automation to release software. It's a huge problem in the industry. $52 billion per year are spent on quality assurance. And over $2 trillion in bugs still impact consumers every single year from software. And so we're there helping ultimately organizations to elevate how they release software and making software more quality so that everybody has a better experience at the end of the day. I'm running Ultimate QA Podcast to bring on guests and elevate their message. Quality assurance leaders and elevate their message, tell their story, and help them to shine. And so that we can propagate more information through the world and so that we can all, all technology professionals can become.

So what's been the challenge then with getting people on the show?

The challenge is getting people on the show. We have sent about 130 to 150 emails targeting our IC EP, and we've gotten 2 interviews closed. Uh, actually today got a third one on the books that will— we'll do a pre-show call to have a conversation. But 3 out of about 150, and that's only like for the first sequence. Of course there's follow-ups as well. 3 out of 150 seems a really low conversion rate, and so that's been the challenge. I'm not sure what we're doing wrong.

Yeah, you should be looking at 5 to 10%, so you're You're under that. I mean, it would go as high as 20, just depending on who, and, and yes, you can hit them on follow-ups, et cetera. So the 3 typical culprits, one, we're not targeting the right people. Like, are these the right people who would come on? Like, are they in big media demand? So if you're targeting like a QA director versus the CEO of a company.

Yeah. Good, good question, Evan. So we have about 5 categories of people we're targeting. CEO, CTO, head of QA, QA director, and QA manager. Interestingly, today with the 3 people that we have on, we're noticing that like people with QA in their title are more likely to join while we've gotten nothing from CEOs or CTOs.

Great. I mean, to be expected depending on how high up the CEO or CTO is. I mean, if it's a CEO, they need to be at a certain size for them to be able to afford your services. Correct. Like some software startup is probably not— I mean, I guess they could hire you, but it's probably not the best type of client for you.

Yeah, correct.

So the CEO of a startup would connect with you and come on your show, but the CEO of a big company is going to be too busy.

Yeah, probably.

Same thing with CTO, typically. Depends, right? But if you're going for— if QA directors, QA— I mean, there's a whole bunch of positions that have QA blank in them, that those would be the ones to target. So if your 3, you know, came out of, I don't know if you split, did you split equally across the 5 categories?

Yeah, pretty much. We're doing about like 12 people outreach per day per category.

Okay. I would first spend more time working with the people with quality or QA in their title. If you're hitting 3 out of 150, but 2/5 of the list are people who are not likely to respond. We've just improved our conversion rate. Now it's 3 out of whatever 3/3 of 150 is.

Yeah. I can't do the math right now.

What is the math on that? But now we're maybe closer to like 5% or 6% of people saying yes. So now we're more in the ballpark. So just getting the right people. The second is the message. So the message is the message. Uh, you can continue to play with the message. I mean, are you using our message, using— you tweaking it?

Uh, yeah, started originally with the message that you recommended, and then, um, we tweaked it a little bit by automatically providing a booking link in the email so that instead of going back and forth with the assistants, they can just pick a time directly and book, put on our calendar. That's what this new interview on Friday did, so that seems to help. Um, and then I also, yeah, recommended to update our— update the message body to make it like shorter and more concise. And we're playing with headlines, and we started that this week.

So the more personal you can make it, the better. If it's worth spending a little extra time customizing it to them as opposed to just a generic email. I mean, the email that, that we have in the program is generic because it has to be, but the more you can put something personal about them in there. Like, hey, I saw you won this award. I mean, you can even use GPT to help you. What is there? What is something personal about this person that they— GPT knows a lot. It'll go to their LinkedIn, it'll go to their website, it'll go and find their bio, right? And help customize the message. It's, it's worth it for the site. Like an average order for you is what? It was like in the tens of thousands or six figures even, right?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It'll be like, I would say $50K and up.

Yeah.

Okay.

So it's definitely worth spending a little bit more time on the emails that are, that are going out. So you can use GPT to help you. And who you working, who's your account manager with us?

Spencer.

Spencer. Okay. So worth talking to him about that as well. Like how can we customize the, the outreach? Because if you put in your name into GPT, it'll, it'll find out stuff about you. It'll know about you. You don't have to be super prolific for it to know about you. So you could take your standard message and then pop it into GPT and say, hey, this is gonna be a message we send to blank. Can you help me customize it to have them be a guest on my show? It's worth, it's worth doing. But yeah, something personal will increase the convergence as well. And then the third thing is just deliverability. Is it, is it getting through? Is it hitting spam blockers or is it actually getting through?

We believe it's getting through because we're sending them through, you know, just regular Gmail. So not a lot of bounces. And in terms of like our email being spam, we check that it's not spam. So seems good.

Yeah.

So usually you'll get some emails that bounce back because, you know, hit the wrong email account or whatever, or the occasional no, like not interested, or this person left, or this person died. That's happened a couple of times.

Hasn't happened to me yet, but okay.

Good to know. It happens every now and then, which then creates an opportunity. Like if that person left, okay, great. Like who, you have a contact. So then you follow up with the person who messages, hey, I'd love to interview, like just go to the website and find out who the new QA person is. Said, oh, thank you so much for writing back. I'd love to connect with new person.

Yeah.

So as long as the emails are getting through, it's usually, it's one of those three things. It's the, or, or combination, right? So, uh, are we targeting the right people? So if you know CTOs and CEOs are not responding, Cool. Stop messaging them and message the other ones and you're already boosting your response rate. Customizing the message to be a little more targeting that person and use GPT to help you. Like, are you doing these yourself? You have a team, you have an assistant?

I have an assistant that's helping me and the message has been pretty generic outside of customizing a few things through the email, like the name, the company, and so on.

Yeah. I mean, hopefully you're at least using their name, not like dear or madam, you know? Hey, yeah, exactly.

Join our podcast.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, don't do that. So we're targeting the right people now. I would swap out CEO, CTO, and then are there two other quality-related positions that you could put in instead?

Yeah, I could, I could figure those out. My concern is at what point they those people, they don't become decision makers, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it's quality assurance intern. We don't want to have them on the list, but that's where it's worth it. It's worth it. They could be a champion for you in the organization. So it depends. Like, positions in big companies are so weird. Like, a director could be a big decision maker or could have no power at all. It's hard, but it's worth testing at least to see, one, are we getting a response rate? And two, you could, it could also be something like if you talk to them on the call, like the first round is call and then you do show, right? So you hop on a call and if you realize, oh, these guys are way too junior, you can nicely bring that up on the call. It's like, oh, this might be a little too early or too small for what I'm, what we're doing on the show. And then figure out who their boss is. Like maybe this is of interest to whoever their boss is to have the boss come on the show and they become an advocate for you. To get the boss on.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Any connection in is usually not bad, whether it's too low in your organization and that passes you up, whether it's a, this person isn't here anymore, cool, who is the person that I should talk to, or can you introduce me to blank person instead? It just makes you get into the organization. Like we just need any kind of response back and then it's easy to figure out who the person is and invite them to come on the show. The surface level doesn't sound that good, but then if you do these things, it makes a lot more sense. Yeah. And then if email deliverability is not a problem, awesome. Then it's just about customizing the message. So you did two and then you have another one booked?

Another pre-call show for tomorrow that she booked. Yeah. Got it.

One thing I would play with about the link. I would see if that has a positive or negative impact because a lot of times it's negative. What you're doing is making it convenient for them and efficient. We're not trying to optimize for efficiency, which may hurt your brain because that's all you do is optimize for efficiency.

Like, what?

What is your entire business model? It's like we optimize for efficiency. We're not we're not optimizing for efficiency here. We're optimizing for the relationship.

Uh-huh.

The point of doing the pre-call is to build a relationship with the person before they come and do the show. Like, every point of contact with this key decision maker is valuable for you. So even in the email back and forth, that's a chance to build a relationship. So the point of that is not just to book the pre-call. The, the point is to start building a relationship. Mm-hmm. When you're doing outreach, it, it's not, I mean, it's your assistant doing outreach on, like, is it your name at the bottom or it's their name?

Their name at the bottom there, it says assistant to Nikolai.

Got it. Okay. So like the worst thing to do is have the assistant end up doing the back and forth with the person.

Yeah.

Because if it's assistant to assistant, cool, that's fine. But if you want to— we're trying to show respect to them and how important they are, and we're trying to build a relationship. So we want it to be you and the person. So as soon as they get a response back, It's like, amazing. Let me introduce you to Nikolai. And then you guys are then creating the relationship. And in there could be the schedule, but it's more than just what's the fastest way to hop on a call. So even in that email that you first send, you're buttering them up, you're saying something, you do a quick, you know, GPT search on them. You say something that you like genuinely about what they're doing, what their business is all about. right? And then that leads to the first call. So we want to treat them like a VIP. If somebody reached out to you and wanted you to be on their show, but then all you were doing was dealing with the assistant, or it's like, okay, yeah, Nikhil, whenever, here's this link. It just doesn't feel as white glove. Yeah, it's not as special. It's not as VIP. And so, and that doesn't necessarily have to be the case, but in this case, what we're trying to do, like if you're gonna do coaching or something, it doesn't have to be you booking all the guests, But you're trying to build a relationship with these people. That's the whole point of this. Typically, you'll find that it works better and also leads to a sale faster the more you are involved in talking to the person. And that's the whole point. Like, we're trying to get a sale out of this. So it's only— we're only trying to deal with people who have an ability to either make a purchasing decision or introduce us to somebody who has— who can make a purchasing decision. Minor tweaks, like it's going cool and you can help any, like, like there's no industries don't matter or, um, um, like geographic location doesn't matter.

I mean, we prefer US and EU, um, and we, we've targeted a few industries, but, um, most industries are okay.

Do you want US?

Is enough? Yeah. Yeah. US is enough. Yeah. You want to niche down?

No, no, no. I think it's great. Okay. Unless there is a, like, I wouldn't even go EU unless you have connections there or existing clients or like European. I mean, I'm half Italian, but Europeans are way slower to buy than Americans. Yeah. And then like, I'm Canadian too, so I like, I wouldn't even target Canada. Like Americans just buy faster. They have more money and they buy faster. Mm-hmm. And it's a huge market. Mm-hmm. So, If you sold some really niche tiny thing that had a really small market, then maybe, but the fact that you can go and sell across America, I think, I think that's the best, the best thing.

We do have a large customer in Europe. So that was the only reason why I mentioned them.

It's worth a test, but I would put it into that last category of, okay, I'm going to, we can test this. Because it's just slower typically. Now they value relationships a lot, but it's slower, harder to build, and smaller budgets typically, and more red tape and proposals and calls. And you might have to fly out there. And it's not the end of the world. Just if I had to pick, I'd pick America all day long over Europe or Canada or any other part of the world for just Speed to people making decisions.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. The two that you, you already did the show with two of them?

Yes, correct. I, I posted my, posted my second interview today.

Okay, let's go. What's the next steps that you're doing for building a relationship and asking for a sale?

Following up when the, when the video's live, following up and letting them know that if they need a second opinion, uh, I'm there to provide that second opinion. Uh, and then for the first show, we already had one of the shorts go out and tagging the individual, and that'll happen for the second interview as well. Um, and that's it so far.

Did you ask to be a second opinion on the call, like after the call ended?

After the call, on the second call, yes, because I learned that from you after one of our sessions. On the second interview, after the recording, yes, mentioned to be second opinion.

What did they say?

Um, uh, we talked a little bit about like what is it that we offer, um, and, uh, he mentioned how there's some like possibility in terms of like, uh, changing— they're changing teams, and so maybe there's some possibility. And that's it, that's where it stopped.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, is that— so that sounds about normal to you?

It depends. So in the middle, so in every interview you're asking one question that relates to what you do, correct? Mm-hmm. What's the question?

Companies usually hire us to help them do automated software testing and speed up their software delivery. Have you encountered any kind of challenges in this situation or something like that?

Sure. Like, or how do you test your software?

Yeah. How do you test your software or have you seen organizations like struggle with automated testing, something like that.

So like whatever their answer is to that question, that's what you bring up at the end. Okay, so we want to ask a question in the middle. We don't want to coach them in the middle. We don't want to spend 20 minutes on this call, this interview, talking about automated software because that's not really their domain. Like they're in charge of a lot of stuff. This is only like a piece of what they are dealing with. But we want to ask a question that then we bring up at the end. So once the recording is stopped, we then like, okay, so just a question. When you said this about testing and automation and then whatever, like what's the line? What would you normally do in a sales situation if somebody said, so, okay, so we can like role play a little bit. So we sell software automation. What's your approach to software automation? How do you guys think about it? What would a client or potential client then say?

Yeah, it depends. They may have a process in place, and so then if they have a process in place, then they would need optimizations. They might want optimizations. They may have a process in place and maybe they're happy with the process, or they may not have any process in place and they know they need it, but they don't know how to get it going.

Right, okay. So option one is they have a process in place, and they tell you about their process. Already you're already poking holes in their process and now there's a bunch of ways that like they're not the experts on, on the, on what you do on the software automation part of it. So they have a process in place already. Cool.

You're thinking already what they, what if they think they are experts in that area or they're knowledgeable enough that maybe they don't feel like they need anything more?

Well, if you can't help them, then there's no deal to be made.

Yeah, no, we can, we can definitely help them, but sometimes maybe people are not— are ignorant to the fact that there's a better way to do it, you know?

Well, that's the point of the conversation, right? So while you're doing the recording, you're asking about what their, what their process is, and they either have a process or they don't have a process. So the people who have a process you're making mental notes, or I would even be like writing out notes, have a notepad file or something somewhere, and you're documenting what their process is. And then once the call has ended, you say, hey, I was thinking about your process and I heard you mention yada, yada, yada. I have a few ideas that might be valuable. Is that interesting? Oh yeah, what, what do you think? And then you give them some value, like, this is what we do all day long, and I noticed in your process, you know, 1, 2, 3, here are the first things that come to mind that might be of value to what you guys are doing. Give them value on the call. Now, your job is to give them value at the end of that call. If you don't say something that's valuable, then why should they follow up with you, right? If they give you their process and you're like, damn, that's a killer process, like, okay, yeah, there's no deal.

Improve our process, right?

Yeah, that's better than ours. Great. Well, why are they going to hire you? So you're telling them, like, even a second opinion is typically for referral partners. These are clients. So it's just giving them value, right? So second opinion, like, if I'm a mortgage broker and I pass off some deals to real estate agents, I'd love to be a second opinion on any deal that you're passing off. But you have an ability to actually help me, not just help my clients. Like you're bringing on people who you can directly help. So at the end of the call, once it's shut down, then offer some help around their process, poke holes in it, find the opportunity, and then see how valuable that is for them to want to go and do the next step. And so that becomes your job. Like the second opinion is actually just on the spot while you're doing the call. You don't have to ask to be a second opinion. You could just give them value, assuming you know enough to be able to poke holes in their process and give valuable feedback. Yeah. Like, are you able to do that?

Yeah, absolutely.

If I walk through my process and then you could keep mental notes, like if someone's explaining how they make YouTube videos, okay, great. Like, I know how to— once the call's over, like, oh my God, okay, we got to talk about your YouTube channel, man. Here's what we need to fix. Right. Same thing. If they have no process, then what do they say about that? Like, we have no process and I don't really care because automation is stupid. I mean, they could say that.

I don't know.

Hopefully they don't. They say we have no process, but we probably should come up with something. Okay, cool. Now the call's over. Hey, so when you— when I asked about your process, you said we should come up with something. I didn't want to go too deep while I'm interviewing you, but this is what we do. Like, I'm happy to go through and help build the process for you if that's something that is of interest. And now you're like digging into their business and you're turning the back part into a coaching call while you've already got them live on the call.

Uh-huh.

But does that make sense?

Yeah, it totally makes sense. Yeah, so you, you transition to a value-add at the end of the call Um, understanding their process, helping them to see ways to improve the process. And yeah, that gives them the value add that should then convert into business.

Yeah, provided you have correctly identified something that they need. Like, we're bringing on people who hopefully have a need, and then you, you have helped them. You become the logical, like, okay, what's the next step? How do we work together? So a lot of it can be done. It's easier for you because you're talking to clients. These are potential clients as opposed to just a referral partner. Like if you're talking to some event organizer that puts on events for QA people, they can't hire you, but their, their clients are your clients. So you're trying to build a relationship to then try to get introductions to their clients. Here you're targeting people who can write a check, right? Or their organization can write a check to you that's $50K to $100K. So just show them that you're kick-ass at what you do. So like, what's the question that you need to ask to just get it, get enough from them to then pull on it once the call is done?

Yeah, I think it's, it's pretty much what you hinted at is, um, what does your guys' automated testing process look like today? Yeah.

What is your process looking today? How do you think about process automation for— is it only for software?

Yeah, it's only for software.

How do you look at your software process automation? Like if you ask me that, like, what are you talking about? But you bring it on people who's like, that's the business. That's what they're in, right? That like they would know what that means. That question is valuable, is interesting. They have a, they have a point of view on it.

Right.

And then a quick answer. We don't want to spend the rest of the call talking about software process automation.

So I was like, oh yeah, why, why not?

Uh, because they're not signing up for a coaching call, because people will be more guarded when it's public. Like, this is an interview, so we don't want to poke holes. Anything that we're doing pre and during is edifying them. We're excited to tell their story. We're curious about how they got started. We're interested in their philosophy about quality insurance, what it means to them, what are their approaches, what are their philosophies around these things. And so that's where we want most of this conversation to go. And then even in our, while you're doing the show, that's most of it, but we need one question that relates to software automation process and then back to, because as soon as you flip it on them and now you're coaching them, if they're saying, yeah, we don't know what we're doing, we suck at that, like that's not a good, public interview. They don't want to be seen as not having the answers.

That makes sense.

So we want to ask one question that then you're getting in their answer. We know where to pull afterwards. And we also don't— they— we want them to know that you are an expert, not just some guy hosting a show, Larry King, you know, podcast guy, right? You are an expert. So what is the question that you need to ask that then, however they answer it— we have a process, it looks like this, we have no process, we're trying to find a process— whatever their answer is, you know then based off that what you're going to ask at the end of the interview once you stop recording. Because people will give you more honest answers when the, when the camera is off versus when it's on. People, they want to look good. They thought they were going to look good. They don't want to be drilled on their process because you're going to expose hopefully problems like you're selling to a pain point that they have. They're much less likely to expose a pain point in a public forum, especially when they're nervous because they haven't done a ton of interviews, than in a private forum afterwards where you've just spent an hour or whatever building rapport with them. So if it were me, it was flipped. Or if you look at Harley, if I was trying to sell Harley on YouTube services from this morning, right? Be like, so Harley, like, what are you doing on YouTube? Like, what's your YouTube strategy? That's what I would ask. And then he'd say, oh, you know, we're trying, I'm trying to build the Harley brand and I've got my podcast for, what did he say, for immigrant entrepreneur or immigrant Jewish entrepreneurs? I think something like that. Cool. But like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know how many people watch the videos. Even if 50 people watch a video, I'd still be happy that I made it because of great conversation. Right. Cool. Next question. I could follow up and say, Harley, you know, you're— I saw that. I checked out the channel. I think you got a real opportunity here where this is really valuable and more than 50 people should be watching these videos. I got a little advice if you're interested. This is what I do, right? What's he going to say? Probably, hey, this— now I should— now I need to message Harley and ask him, right? But like from that one question, I wouldn't want that to be— if I asked him that, and started giving him YouTube feedback while he thinks he's being interviewed, it's, it's not a great experience right now. He's a lot more used to being interviewed and called out and slammed by, as he was saying, like the media and all this other stuff. So he might be more open to it. But in general, you want to edify, you want to make them look good in any public setting and then afterwards drill down on the problem and find the pain point. That then you can solve.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Cool. So fixing the, the outreach, no more CTOs and CEOs, more QA people, making the messages more custom and personal. And if you pass all the spam filters, then that's great. And then making sure that we ask our question in the middle of the interview and then bring it up at the end and turn the last part into a coaching session because you are Talking to clients.

Yeah.

Let's go, Nikolai.

Let's do it, Evan.

And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to become.

To watch me coach another entrepreneur, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it.

Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. Stop talking about coaching and start showing your coaching. Entrepreneurs don't buy coaching programs. They buy someone who can truly help them change. Your content can't just say you're good. It needs to prove it.