47: Using AI for Effective Cold Outreach with Tom Ryan

This podcast episode is sponsored by chiefaiofficer.com offering training and certification through the International association of Chief AI Officers. Interested in a new career or leveling up your value in the marketplace? Chiefaiofficer.com can help. The following is a conversation with cold outreach expert Tom Ryan, the founder of referral program Pros. In this episode, we dive deep into the art of cold outreach, uncovering that delicate balance between personalization and scalability and the role that AI plays in transforming these cold outreach interactions. We'll explore how to move beyond the noise of generic messages, how to craft meaningful connections that not only build your brand, but also really solve your prospect's problems. And Tom makes sure that we cover how to avoid the common pitfalls.

If you're trying to do this yourself.

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I'm excited to have a friend of Chief AI Officer Tom Ryan on the podcast today. Tom is the founder of referral program Pros and how we found each other was through exactly what he's going to talk to. Talk about us, talk to us about today, and that's Cold Outreach. Tom reached out to us with a very compelling narrative. It opened up the conversation. We ended up getting on the phone, and that was many months ago. And now he has been actively supporting notifying the right people about Chief AI Officer for months now. And with our interest inside of our community, when it comes to exactly what Tom does, there was no other choice for us to cover this topic than the Pro himself. So, Tom, welcome to the Call today.

Great to be here. Excited to dive in. Yeah, I'm excited to do this.

Nice. So we're going to talk about obviously what you guys do at referral program Pros, but let's maybe start with a little bit of your history. Like what. What have you been up to for the past? I don't know, career that led you to where you are now?

Yeah, yeah, I won't go. I'll give you. I'll give you the short story. So, you know, I got out of college and. And went. Went abroad and actually I started a travel business over. So I actually lived in Florence, Italy for about five years right after I graduated from Gonzaga. And that was a blast. Like, best 20s you could imagine. Yeah, you know, just kind of travel around Europe. It was a travel company for other study Abroad students. So that was a lot of fun. Loved entrepreneurship. Decided to move back to the states after some time and then got into corporate and kind of started at the, at the bottom as an account manager. Went all the way up to COO of that company. Uh, there's a fintech company here in Bellevue and that's kind of where I, I, I learned more of my outreach chops, you know, my go to market shops. So a lot of LinkedIn and email testing both, you know, for, for the team and we did a lot of, of outreach and that's where I learned a lot of, of what I do now. Um, but I was kind of itching to be an entrepreneur again and yeah, started my, my own thing a few years ago and just have been having a blast with it and, and just helping, you know, B2B service businesses really start the right conversations with the right people. And that's kind of the basics of what it is, that's the easiest way to put it.

So we've got people from all strata of business, from owners all the way down to, you know, people who are just getting started in entrepreneurship or earlier in their careers. Explain to them what it is that you do at referral program pros.

Yeah, so what we do is really, is really sit kind of side by side with you and look at how, what's the best way to take your offer to market. So it's very much a go to market agency where we're, we're doing that through LinkedIn or email or both. And you know, so it's really just about, you know, there's, there's, there's three main buckets that you want to look at when it, when you're in any outreach campaign and it's, it's going to be, you know, who are you targeting? And making sure you're targeting is really good. You're reaching out to the right people. What is your messaging, you know, is it compelling? Is it about them? What are you saying to them that's gonna get them interested? Because it's harder than ever as you know, to get through the noise. And so, you know, like leading something of value, of course. And then it's just about the volume, you know, and what, what kind of volume can you do? That sometimes depends on what's your tam, you know, your total addressable market. And, and that, that'll determine whether LinkedIn or email, one of the factors, it'll determine whether those two or both will be the right play for you.

So anybody who's on LinkedIn and certainly that has a business email address, has probably been. I'll even call it the victim of cold outreach in a lot of cases.

Right.

There's a lot of people that are out there doing it the wrong way.

Yeah.

What would you, what would you define as the wrong way to do this?

Yeah, I think the wrong way is to ignore relevance. Meaning, like, you know, if you're reaching out to, you know, like an owner of an E Comm company and you want to talk to them about, you know, doing cold outreach, for example, like, that doesn't make any sense. Right. Um, so. And you get that stuff all the time. It's just irrelevant messages that really have no business landing in your inbox because you would be very, very unlikely that you would have that problem. So that's one thing is just relevance, and then the other is, is being, is. Is focusing on yourself and what you do and how, you know, how your company is so great versus focusing on how can you help solve a likely problem that that person has? And so to kind of flip the question, it would be, you know, really, it's about like, so. So the easiest way to get people that you don't know, strangers, to trust you is to start to. To show them that you can solve their problem. Right. And the easiest way to do that is to just simply start solving the problem. Right. So when you're reaching out, it's, hey, a lot of folks like you have this problem, here's a way that I can start solving. And so that's what I like to call a value offer. And that's what we use with almost every one of our clients, is what can you offer them upfront that starts solving their problem for them. Instead of trying to sell them something, the sale becomes then a byproduct of, of you helping them. Right. Much like we're doing for you right now, we're offering a challenge for. For folks and that starts to solve their problem about their lack of knowledge in AI.

So, you know, one of the. I get. Still to this day, I get pitched a lot with, hey, let us, you know, let us do this for you. And I'm. I'm very hesitant because my, I'm I'm basically giving up my brand's representation to essentially a vendor or in a lot of cases, a stranger, because it's the first outreach that we've had with those individuals. And that's a very uncomfortable proposition, at least for me. Some businesses may, you know, maybe playing a short game and just in it for volume or whatever the Case might be, how do you, how do you make sure that your. For anybody who is interested in exploring cold outreach to support sales and prospect calls and that sort of thing for their company, what. What should they be looking out for? To make sure that the individual who they're gonna be working with that they can actually trust that they're gonna be a good steward of your brand's message.

Yeah, I think, you know, it's. It's really looking like taking a microscope to those three buckets I mentioned earlier and really looking at. Do you feel like the targeting is correct and really look at the actual list? Like, is this the list that can be created? Is this the right people? Like, are we reaching the right people? And then are we reaching them with the right message, the right value offer? Like, really looking at each of those components and can you, you know, are they. Are they hitting each of those boxes correctly? And then one thing that still kind of surprises me that people ignore is, is just the volume that they're. That they're doing. You know, most people that I talk to, when they're doing it on their own, for example, or if they're using a vendor, I often ask them, well, what kind of volume are you doing? Right? Like on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, either one of those is fine. And people usually can't answer that question, which to me is crazy because it's like, you know, if you, if you're doing, you know, a thousand outreaches per month versus 10,000 per month, sure, you're going to have dramatically different results, of course. So. But just taking a microscope to each of those buckets and looking at, you know, the campaign like, those are the only three buckets that matter. There's a lot you can, There's a lot of onion to peel back in each of those, but make sure that they're nearing each of those three.

So for somebody who's going to be deploying a cold outreach campaign or effort in their business, obviously the amount of calls that they're getting scheduled and that sort of thing is some tangible metric. But what else can they, or should they be looking at to know, is this effective? Am I doing this? Like, is this the best use of our marketing muscle?

Yeah, I think looking at, you know, number of calls booked is a, is a, is a one metric. But not all calls are created equal. Not all leads are created equal. So I think the, A good, A good metric is, you know, are you having, are you having the. The right conversations with the right people and you kind of will should know that within, you know, your first five or six calls, like, is, is this going to lead to business? And because you won't know, you know, especially if you don't know your, your current close rate or anything. Because people are on all different phases of this journey of outreach. And you know, so there's the initial outreach, there's follow ups, there's the call, then you have to have the call, then it's how many of those close into business. And so to know that kind of throughout, like if you don't know your numbers already, it may take you three to six months to kind of get a good hold on what those numbers are and they'll improve and they may go up or down. But yeah, I would say just knowing that, like looking at, are you having the right conversations with the right people?

So how would somebody know if this was the right move as a business owner? How would they know that this was a channel that they should be putting some energy into?

Yeah, I think, I think you kind of want to back out, like reverse engine engineered a little bit. So what are you doing currently? And I would, I, I would say that question is a little bit, a little bit loaded depending on where you're at in your business. Like if you've already, if you already have a business that's very functional and you already are taking calls and closing deals, then it just becomes a little bit more about the numbers. If you're not, and you're kind of launching a new offer, or you're just kind of starting out, or you're, or you're just, you know, you've changed a business model, well then, you know, you won't know until you do it right. And, and you just, you know, you have to come up with the right strategy that you think is going to work and then execute it and that's how you'll know. So it probably makes sense to answer the question of the business owner.

Sure.

Because that's an easier way to know. I would say it's looking at, well, how many calls right now does it take you to close a deal? So knowing your numbers and be able to reverse engineer that and say, okay, if I have 10 calls, I'm going to close three deals. That's what we're doing right now. Great. Okay, so how many, what is it gonna take then? How many leads do I need to generate with my value offer? Let's say to generate 10 calls. Right. That might take 20, 30, 40, 50 leads to generate that many calls. Okay. And so you kind of Just reverse out the numbers and then how many outreaches is it gonna take to generate X number of leads? And so you just back everything out and then you should be able to, if it's the right strategy, come up with a reasonable confidence that it's the right, that the right play for you.

In a cold outreach environment, what is the best call to action? Is it to schedule the call? Is it like in our case, we're driving them to register for our three day challenge? What are you, where are you finding the best results as a call to action?

Yeah, it really depends on the size. Like what is your offer? Right. So if it's a, I would say anything, like it's very difficult to sell something that's over $1,000 without having a call. Okay, fair. Unless, unless you have a really robust content machine. I think you guys probably do and are probably on the little bit of an anomaly but you know, because people have to develop that trust and nobody's going to, you know, people want to be on a call with someone if they're going to spend more than $1,000 up front. And so if that's your offer, which most folks, Most people in B2B service businesses are, that's going to be their price ranges. I would say to, yeah, to book that call, to get them on the phone to talk. But make it as much about like the first outreach often would be presenting your value offer. And that oftentimes, especially if it's like a video, either personalized or even generic, but that makes you a human being as fast as possible. And so use that video. Then that video job is to book the call. So it's more difficult nowadays to be like, hey, we're so great, we do this. Yeah, here's my claim, here's my guarantee, here's my offer. Let's get on a call. You'll book some calls that way. But what's a lot more effective is to present something that starts to solve their problem and let that value offer do its job. And let, let that be what, what inspires them to book a call?

So you just mentioned in a, in a B2B scenario, is that primarily where you focus? And part two, is that primarily where the best results will come from. A cold outreach situation like this, typically.

Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I, I don't, I only do B2B. Yeah, I don't do any B2C offers. And yeah, I mean, mostly because there's not, you know, there's not a ton that you would sell out there that's you know, that would. That where outreach would make sense from a B2C perspective. You know, I guess, you know, you could. And then it's much harder to target that way too.

Okay, I was thinking about that maybe.

Like investing or something like that. You know, if you really got like, all right, here's a very wealthy neighborhood. And. But yeah, I only do, I only do B2. B2B.

And what, what industries are represented by your clients currently?

Yeah, so we do a lot of consulting, SaaS, some coaching. Those are the, the, the three main ones. A little bit of, of like web development. Have some web development clients franchising a little bit. But yeah, those are, those are the main ones. I've had some other interesting ones as well, but they all kind of, I'd say 90% of them fit into one of those buckets.

If somebody is listening to this. Are there particular industries where your experience has shown cold outreach may not be the best option for them?

I would say if you are a. I think what, what's really difficult is especially like coaches that don't have a very clearly defined offer or outcome. Like, if you can't define the result and your offer and why you're different and unique very clearly and quickly it's that then it becomes quite difficult to get results for like a coach. But on the other hand, if you can do that and you're able to start solving someone's problem and honestly. And again with like a video. Yeah, work really well. But a lot of coaches don't have, unfortunately, like, they might be great, they might be really good at what they do, but they don't have a great way of conveying that to someone quickly.

So for somebody who's never done this before, they might think, oh, it's. I just, I go online, I get a list, I start shooting out messaging. But what I know is that it's a volume game. And if someone was to attempt to do this by, I don't know, I'm sure there's a lot of black hat ways that they could go about this that would probably get them kicked off of whatever platform they're using as outreach or get their emails, you know, sent to the spam box. But what does a, what does a tool stack look like to execute an effective cold outreach campaign at scale?

Yeah, so if, if you're, you know, we do email and LinkedIn. Um, and so if you're talking about email, the tech stack would look like, you know, you're going, if you're going to do it on your Own, let's say, yeah, you're going to need to, you know, get a number of domains. What I would not do is just use like an outreach or a sales loft or something like that where you plug in your main domain and start sending emails. Because nowadays like you just burn your domain right away.

So explain that.

Well, so in the last, like two years and even more so in the last, even like four to six months, both, you know, the main email service providers have just really cracked down more on cold email. And so that means that, and you now have to maintain a spam complaint rate of three out of a thousand. So if you have more than three out of a thousand that are getting spam complaints, you're going to start, you know, you're going to start burning your domain. And so meaning, like they won't let your emails go through anymore, they'll just hit spam. That can happen at an org level, at a company level. So, and it has, it is, it is happening to people, to many companies. And that means like now you can't, now your company can't use email. And that's a, you know, obviously that's a killer. So what you would do if you're doing cold outreach is different domains, buy different domain domains from Namecheap or GoDaddy. And then what you would do is, is you get, you attach maybe two or three inboxes to each domain and now you can start sending emails from those inboxes and you would load those up into the platform like instantly or Smart Lead. So and then once you have your inboxes there, then you can start sending. And now you're going to need to, of course, to go find the data from somewhere. And that's kind of a separate stack where you look at. All right, what's the data source? Is it going to be LinkedIn or Apollo or some other source? And then what is the tool you're going to use to scrape that data?

So when I hear the word scrape, you know, I might think of a gray hat or a black hat effort because in the past that's how it was done. But that is not the exclusive, quote, unquote, scraping methodology. I guess at this point there's companies like, like you mentioned Apollo and others. They are the aggregators of the, the collective data. And then you go in there and you, you get your, your ideal target leads from there.

Yeah, right. So you can go in and, and, and there's, and then you can do a combination of them as well to, you know, get a plan and get the data or you can scrape the data. And so, and there's tools that, that, that you can do that with. And then you have to, of course, then go. Even if you are using Apollo and just using the data that they have and paying for it, you still need to validate it using another validation tool. Because if you just start sending, like many of those are going to be outdated emails, they're going to be blocked, they're not in use. Like, they're not, it's not very reliable. And so, and if you start having a bounce rate of Even more than 4 or 5%, you're going to start again burning your domain, burning your inboxes, and your infrastructure will be just dead. And so you need to make sure that you're validating your data ideally within, you know, a month or two of when you're going to send the email so that you have emails you know are functional.

And validation would simply mean I'm running it through a tool that's saying this is a dead email, this is a live email.

Correct? Yeah, yeah. I use a tool called Lead Magic, which is very reliable and, well, good pricing in terms of validating your data.

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Now back to the episode. So obviously we're an AI company. We're always interested in how other organizations are leveraging AI. Has generative AI had an impact on how you perform this service?

Yeah, so, you know, there's a number of ways that we've used AI. One of the ways is, is getting a little bit more, you know, like, like personalization, for example. So really, you know, looking at, and there's kind of mixed feelings about this, but looking at how do you relate someone's LinkedIn profile to the reason that you're reaching out to them, for example, so, and everybody can put in, you know, the company name and the job title and the kind of those data points to make it seem personalized. But what we'll do for a campaign is instead look at, well, what did the person say about themselves in their about section? And we kind of use that for the reason that we are Reaching out in the first place. Right. And so that's one of the ways that we use AI when we do, especially when we do LinkedIn outreach.

Interesting. So I guess the old way of doing it would be jumping into LinkedIn, identifying people who and then actually manually or copying and pasting a message and that sort of thing. With the amount of personalization that is capable. If I'm manually doing this, I'm reading this, I know that they went to University of Washington or whatever and I'm able to reference that and those sorts of things. Is that level of personalization, personalization does the result from that, is it worth the effort? Because the trade off is I can get hyper personalized because I'm manually reviewing their stuff as compared to I'm leveraging tools that are allowing me to, to send out 10,000 messages per month.

Yeah.

Manually impossible.

Yeah, I think, I think you can get with the right prompts. I mean I've experimented a lot with, with different prompts on, on when it comes to messaging. And we have some, some prompts and some tools we're using that just get really, really good conversational type messages where you're just pulling information about what the person has actually said about themselves versus just like a data point and then relating that their work usually to why you're reaching out in the first place and then how you would propose solving their, their likely problem and what you're offering for free to help them do that.

What would be a good free offer for you? Said your typical customer is a coach or consultant, somebody offering a B2B type service or product. What would be that? What's typically a good free value add?

Yeah, I mean it can be, it can be anything from a, you know, a PDF guide, blueprint or you know, up and up to a personalized video and anything in between. I, I, the, the ones that you, the way to figure out what a good value offer is is to look at what is your, the lifetime value of each of your new customers higher that is the more you should be personalizing your value offers. And so if it's really high or even if it's not, if you have the time, that's the other thing to look at. You have the time to do it. Um, and it's, and if you, you know, if you're, your lifetime value is more than $10,000 and you have, you know, a few minutes to, to do, to spend on each one, I would definitely do more of like a personalized video and that can be a review or an audit like if, for example, like if you're in HR and you're trying to help companies attract more talent, you might offer like a, a talent attraction audit. And then you look at, and you have a loom video and you look at, okay, hey, here's your website, here's your job page, here's your glass door, here's your LinkedIn, here's what's good about it, and here's what I would improve, and here's some ideas for you. And so think about like your value offer is you are sharing your expertise and giving them some new ideas and that's exactly how you want to frame your outreach. Like, hey, I have some ideas for you based on my work, based on this, based on what I'm seeing. Do you mind if I share a video with you? Right.

And interesting.

It's kind of like halfway to a call, like, they say yes to that video. Great. Here's, here's the video I created for you. It's very personalized, might only take you three or four minutes. And especially after you do a few of them, you can crank them out very quickly. And those I see converting at like one out of two to one out of three to a call. And so not only are you getting more leads from your initial outreach, right? Because you're offering something of value instead of asking for something. So, so not only are you getting more leads, but you're getting more of them converted to a cult. Right.

So I'm always thinking about leverage and scale. How can I do something that is effective because I know manually. Look, if I, if I show up to your office with a bouquet of flowers and, you know, fresh baked cookies, I'm probably going to get your attention. Not scalable. So I have to create experiences for prospects that if I am going to do the outreach that I want it to be as close to that experience as I can, where they're going to say, absolutely, tell me more. Yeah. Would you suggest that doing those videos in advance and just sending that video is that it's not scalable? But does that, does that can have a higher impact than me just saying, hey, here's what I can do. Are you interested in me doing it?

Yeah. I would not never recommend making the videos first. The reason is you don't know if that person actually has that problem. It's likely that they do.

Got it.

Perhaps. But you know, out of a hundred people, like, and you know, if you're, maybe you're selling SEO or something like, you know, you probably have, there might only be Three or four people that are actively in market, like right now they're in market and then you might have another 10 to 20 that they're, they're thinking about, but they're not quite ready to buy. And then you have maybe another 20 or 30% that's interested, but it's not really a problem for them yet. And you know, but they'll still take it. But the, the, the big benefit of using a value offer is, is you start compounding your list as you go. So now instead of using outreach and just moving on from one lead to the next, after they say no or ignore you, you get more leads because you are offering something of value. And all of those leads now should be entered into your marketing ecosystem because they might, they. Not everyone's going to book a call with you right away, but a lot of people will book a call in a few, in a couple weeks or a couple months. And so people are always looking for ways to build their list. Well, this is an excellent way because everybody who wants that value offer should be added into your marketing list now. And you're, now your list compounds as you're doing.

So I know as a marketer that that consistent follow up or you know, just staying relevant in front of mind ends up resulting in when that person's ready saying, oh, I know these guys, let me or oh, I'm ready. Who was that? Oh, it was those guys that sent me this email. Obviously if somebody says yes, I'm interested in the, the, the value proposition from this email. I want the video demonstration of what you could do to our site, whatever, that's a great candidate and you want to continue to follow up with them. Do you do the same thing with the cold outreach if you don't get a response or do you just move on to the next lead?

No, I typically will run only a two or three if it's email, for example, two or three email sequence. You know, we're not like badgering people. It's like, hey, here's it's two or three emails. And if you're, if you're, if your market is small, then you might have a bigger sequence and you might send them five, six or more emails. But if you have a really big market, I would send two or three emails per on your sequence and just move on to the next person in.

One of the things that I like to ask whenever we've got these calls is obviously you're using AI. Who do you think in your space is doing a good job with leveraging AI as part of their product offering for individuals who need these tool stacks.

I think Jesse Owlett, he's the founder of Lead Magic, he's doing some really interesting things in the data space. You know, just providing really great data in a number of different ways. I think another company called trigafi, which is Match Max Mitchum. Trigafi is interesting because it takes social signals and then allows you to capture those and base your outreach or sorry, execute your outreach based on those social.

Signals and define a social signal for somebody who may not be familiar with that lexicon.

Yeah, sorry. It would be like someone got promoted to, you know, a director or someone got funded. Maybe a company got funded or someone posted about something that is relative to your business. Your keywords. Yeah, someone commented on something. So you take. There's all these different kind of, you know, signals. Data are just really just data that are available on, on various social media platforms. And they take that and allow you to capture it, harness it and then act on it.

And those triggers would indicate like this would say, now's a good time to reach out to this individual.

Exactly. Yeah.

Interesting. And then internally for you guys, just with your operational.

How.

How have you introduced generative AI outside of the tool stack that you're using, but just the day to day things with your team.

One way we use it, which is I would recommend every. This is a, a use case for every single company. Nice. Would be for your SOPs right to teach because the more that you can operationalize your business, the more your business is worth. Because like my. My job is to. Is to be as less and less involved as possible and remove myself so that, you know, Tom, you know, the, the, the more your business depends on you, the less valuable your business is. Right. As a founder or owner or whatever. Um, and so to create like SOPs so that you. That you could hand your business over to someone and say, here's how the business is run. And the way you can do that really effectively is for anything that is repetitive that needs to, you know, be delegated to someone and you want to teach them how to do it and then document it. Is you use like loom.com and you create a loom video of the task that you are doing that you want to create an SOP for and then you have that video. But then what you do is you take the transcription of that video that which Loom provides. So you talk on the video and you take that transcription and you plug it into even chat GPT.

Yeah.

And you say, hey, I'M creating an SOP for this task. Please fill in any gaps I missed and make this a very actionable sop. And you could give it a free framework or whatever if you want. But, but that you should do for really everything that you want an SOP for is because now you have a video and you have a document to go with it, and it might only take you four minutes, you know, to create that.

So where are you storing these internally? How are you. Because we've done this before. We've, we've documented, we've been in companies and they've documented everything. And then they, they don't get used. It's like, oh, we've got them. They're in a binder over there.

Yeah, we just use Google Drive. I mean, for our business, we put things in, you know, our. We have an SOP folder that. For everything that we.

So nothing fancy, nothing complicated.

No, no. Yeah.

How do you ensure compliance that people.

Are using the SOPs when we're doing training? Like, that's how we train. And so, you know, you don't really get to do stuff for, for the most part until you, you know, viewed those. Because then you know exactly how to do it. It's pretty obvious in our business, like whether you're following the SOP or not. And so, and, and another way is to, you know, have someone show you how they're doing it. Right. And then you'll know are they, are they following it or not?

Okay.

And so I think that's, that's the best way to know if someone understands something is have them teach it.

Yeah, that's definitely universal. What are maybe some ways that you think that you guys are using AI in a, in a clever way that you're not necessarily seeing others use it, particularly in your industry?

Honestly, I think like the way that we do our LinkedIn outreach is. I hate, I hate giving that part away, but I think, yeah, don't give it away. But that's one way. It's just our messaging. I'll just put it at that. Like, the way we do our messaging gets really good results because of how relevant and personalized we're able to do it at a mask. We don't use automation in our business. And by, by what I mean by we don't use LinkedIn.

Okay. Why not?

Because it's risky. The risk would be the getting your account banned. Getting your account.

So LinkedIn is not favor favorable to that kind of behavior?

No, and I think they'll be less and less so as time Goes on like they're randomly right now just completely shutting off API access to some really big names that's like, I think like Taplio got completely like their, their API was shut, shut off.

Because of that.

Yeah, because of, they're just. People are gaming the system with these tools and like, look, I mean the biggest complaint people have about LinkedIn is they get too much spam. It's like what is, you know, in my inbox is like they're like so annoying and so LinkedIn has no interest in, in continuing to happen. And so I think they're just going to say they're just going to start. It's particularly the tools that, that automate messaging, automate dms, those are, I think the ones that are going to be in the crosshairs of LinkedIn and we'll get their API shut off and we'll be. And, and, and then, or start banning accounts for those that are using because.

It'S a explicit violation of the LinkedIn policies.

Yep, yep, exactly. I mean it has been for some time, but I just think like it's, it's going to become like they're going to be cracking down more and more. I've already seen.

Seems like a bad idea to build your business hoping that you don't get caught breaking the rules.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's, it's not too sustainable. And, and, and look, I mean, and I've, I used to use the tools, I got accounts like, you know, when I was in corporate, I got accounts restricted and banned before we knew what we were doing. Yeah, and that was years and years ago. So. And they've only gotten more strict with it. And so, you know, you use the tools like the, the targeting is, is not great, you know, and then you're, you're relying on cookie cutter messaging and then also you're, you can't do very much volume because all these tools will throttle your volume anyway. So that, to keep your account safe. But I don't think LinkedIn doesn't care. There's going to be like, if you're using an automation tool, we're just going to ban your account pretty soon.

So it sounds like the options are either do it manually, which pros and cons. Hyper personalization for sure. Con would be obviously scale volume. You require human resources to participate in that. Like a human, to sit behind the keyboard and do those things and then there's an opportunity, I guess for you to. Human error can enter in when it comes to not following up or not catching the fact that somebody did reply or anything like that. You can use tools like you mentioned Taplio or other tools that allow you to do scale but at the risk of getting your LinkedIn account blocked or banned. So you have to find that kind of that sweet spot in the middle. And is that where you guys fit?

Yeah, I mean I think, I think we do. And I know it's convenient for me to badmouth automated dms, but I just more so than the risk factor which is there is, I don't find them too effective. I've used them most of the big, big ones at least. But yeah, I think like what we're, I guess the way we're different is really just looking at how do you, you know, get really good personalization and do the right volume. That does right now in present day need to be done by a human being in order to be really effective or as effective as possible. Because we're, we're able to do about three times as much from a volume perspective as you can with an automated tool. But we're also able to do the targeting much better cause there's a human being looking at each message that's being sent out and then you're also able to personalize all those a very, very specific way.

LinkedIn's my primary social platform. I guess we target, you know, non technical business professionals. So I am, I'm over it when it comes to all these like DMs that are just obviously poor match, no value offer. Like so how do you, how do you cut through the noise? Because I would imagine that in your LinkedIn box, my LinkedIn box, everybody's LinkedIn box. It's going to be 10 of those probably automated or poor execution outreach messages as compared to something that I'm like, like wow, this is legit. I'm interested in replying or engaging.

Totally. Yeah, great question. So it's really, it's really nailing relevance and personalization. So reaching out to the right people starting with your targeting, like are these people going to have very likely going to have problem that you solve. A big part of that too is are they even active on the platform? So that's one of the big criteria that we hit is like we look for think of like a Venn diagram of like you have, you know, there's like who is in your suite, who's your icp but who's, who of those is active on the platform, who's posting, who's commenting, who has a premium account. So those are the people we look at for our campaigns. And again, makes sense. You need to do that manually to really find those targets, at least currently. And so that's a big factor is like, who's acting on that platform, who fits your icp and then, and then getting something from a relevance perspective, like looking at, well, what's the kind of work that this person does, not just their job title or their company, but like, specifically what's their background, what's their work, what do they say about themselves? And how do we relate that to why we're reaching out and the problem that we're trying to solve? Right. And so to be less vague, it's like you would say something like, hey, looking at the work you're doing in, you know, operations management, I know it can be tough, you know, with so many softwares available these days, but I had a few ideas on, you know, what might really make sense for you and your team. Do you mind if I share a quick video with you? Nice. On what? On what I thought. And on what, what? On a, on a few, a few ways that you guys could get more out of your current systems or whatever, you know, and you can even, you can even target by technology. So you could see like, well, what technologies are they currently using? And then, right, you structure your that way, but that way you kind of hit all the components of your targeting is good. You're being, you're, you're relevant to, you know, what's the work they do in a likely problem that they have based on the work that they are doing and then getting something that starts to solve that problem for them. Right, because that's the, that's the best way to get people to trust you and talk to you is like you've offered to start solving their problem. You're not just asking for something.

You know, obviously whatever you do must have worked because we're working with you guys. And I get pitched on this stuff like every day. Right. So that's one proof of concept. The other one is I used to have a boss a long time ago when you were in Florence. I, in my 20s, I was in the Virgin Islands, I spent about five, six days and I had a boss down there and he would jokingly say there's nothing that brute force and sheer ignorance can't solve. And when it comes to cold outreach, my understanding of it was that it was a lot of brute force and sheer ignorance by most people. But, but, and like, and that's why they're getting accounts banned. That's why I'm blocking them and archiving them because it's just a brute force effort. There's no real effort to match message to market or to make sure that I'm on the software that they want to, or even that it's a situation. Like, I like the way that you leave it kind of open. Hey, I noticed you guys are doing this. We fix that all the time. If you guys were interested, I'd love to, you know, show you, or show you a demonstration, whatever that messaging is. It's not the brute force saying bye, bye, bye bye, or you know, making an assumption that I have that problem. So this has all been fantastic. There's going to be people that are hearing this and hopefully this has changed their opinion when it comes to cold outreach. That A, it's effective if done well. B, it doesn't, it doesn't impact your brand or your, your personal brand or your profile even negatively. Because that was one of my things. I had, we tried it three or four years ago. Somebody was actually messaging from my account and I didn't realize what they were sending until I saw the messages. And I was like, what the hell is this? Like, turned my stomach a little bit that somebody representing me was being that aggressive with the messaging. So how can, obviously, you know, working with you guys would be one of those ways, but how can somebody vet the, the quality of a vendor who's promising to, to do it the right way or to get them these magnificent results that are possible.

Yeah, I think looking at like asking them a little bit about the strategies they're currently using with other clients and just have them talk through like, hey, well, what's the strategy you're using right now with some of your clients? And if it's not, if it's going to be about just like, I don't know, you know, volume and asking, you know, like, oh, like, oh, we have a framework that we plug in for every single person. You know, like, it's just not gonna be very effective because I mean, you literally can send a million emails nowadays and this was not the case maybe five, ten years ago where mass outreach worked a lot better because it was.

A little bit new, hadn't been saturated.

Now like, you, you can run a, you can send a million emails in a month and book zero calls if you're not doing it correctly. You know, I mean, and there are agencies where that happens and it's, they just don't get the, for whatever reason. It could be a technical reason, but even if it's just a copy and just the offer like, it won't resonate. Literally, no one's going to say yes. And so, but when you, when you, it's funny you mentioned it's like, yeah, it being bad for your brand. I would argue, and I have this actually as my banner of my LinkedIn is like, you should think of outreach as a way to build your brand. Right. Because when you go about it from a consultative approach.

Yes.

Your mindset should be, I'm going to go try to help people. The byproduct of that is going to be that they buy something. Right. That's a byproduct. And so go into every outreach, every call.

Wow.

I'm just trying to solve their problem. And then if they buy something great, that's a great buy. Some people are going to buy regardless. But, like, that's the mindset. Don't think about, like, I'm trying to make sales. It's more, I'm trying to help people actually solve the problem. Then when they like the idea and how I do that, then it's like, now you, now they pay for the implementation. Right.

That, right there's the nugget. That's a whole different shift when it comes to things. So if people want to explore what that looks like, here's your cold outreach opportunity. What would you say to the individuals who are listening to this that, that are interested?

Yeah, I'd say just, just connect with me on LinkedIn. It's just, I'm, I'm Thomas Ryan Oaks. That's my official. I, I, Tom Ryan is what I go by because I got so many Toms in my family, but my name, because I verified on LinkedIn is Thomas Ryan Oaks. So that's my LinkedIn and best way just to connect and say, hey, Zion, the pod looking at, doing some outreach and I'll just, I'll, I'll send you a time and we can, we can chat about it and if we work together, great. But again, like, I love what I do because I get to talk to people about so many different offers and that's, I'm kind of an offer junkie. I'm like, all right, how do we, and I, I, I try to, you know, I solve a puzzle and so, you know, and I end up, but when you go into it with a consultative approach, that's, that's what ends up winning a lot of business and it makes it more fun that way. So that's the best way.

Awesome. So I will include that in the show notes. Is there. That's just the best way. Just to reach out dm, build a, A, a personal outreach to you and take it from there.

Yep. A hundred percent. Yep.

So, folks, I can tell you that you're probably, you may not even be aware of it or weren't aware of it until we did this call. Then you realize, hey, wait a minute, those weren't real people reaching out to me. Those were automations. It is effective if done the right way. It, as Tom shared, it does build the brand, which is a paradigm shift for me. I saw it as, you know, I'm putting my brand at risk by doing this. But if you approach it the way that he mentioned or have vendors who approach it the way that he mentioned, it's brand building. And that's like, that's a huge benefit. I hadn't even considered that. So thank you for sharing that. Tom, any closing remarks or anything for people who are ready to get going or might be on the fence about this?

Yeah, I'd say like, take, take some of those. Think about what your value offer might be. Like, what's your slice of your service that you can offer for free? And just start offering that to folks and test it on your own. And then if you get, you know, once you get traction, then you know, you can contact someone like me to, to help you with the volume. But there's no reason, like people think they have to have everything set up perfectly first before they start doing outreach. But your outreach and having calls with people also helps you define what your offer should be.

Good point.

What, how, what you're, you know, let the market tell you whether your outreach and whether your offer is what they want. And so outreach really helps you do that in a powerful way.

Great advice, man. Thank you so much for sharing this time. I look forward to some big successes with you. And for those of you who are on this again, I can't recommend Tom enough if this is the approach you want to take. And with that, we'll see you guys on the next episode. Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to Using AI at Work.

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