Ryan Dohrn explains how to run a proper sales experiment: pick 20 prospects, try five outreach attempts three business days apart, vary your three-word subject line and three-sentence message each time, and track what works. One failed email isn't data.
Experimentation in the sales business. Is it really a good thing? The answer is yes, it is. It wasn't but a couple weeks ago that somebody reached out to me and said, Ryan, I tried your subject lines and they don't work. I said, wow, okay, I don't hear that very often. Tell me more. Well, what they did is they sent one subject line to say like 5 people, didn't get a reply, and just gave up. Oh, it doesn't work. Friends, that's not the way that experiments work. If you're gonna do an experiment in sales, try to revise your strategy, you need to be having a controlled group of people, say around 20 customers, that you're gonna work on a pattern of every 3 business days, 5 outreaches. Each outreach is going to be a different subject line, different point of relevancy, working them every 3 business days. 3 words in the subject line, 3 sentences max, reach out every 3 business days, a total of 5 different outreaches and then come back to me and say, hey, it didn't work. Friends, remember, when you're adjusting your sales strategy, you need to create scenarios that set you up for a win. I don't have the Holy Grail in sales, but I've got the next closest thing, and that is proven strategies that we've tested over the course of the last 15 or 20 years. And never forget, friends, I'm constantly reinventing and reestablishing myself in sales because Times are a-changin', friends. Get out there and sell something, make us all proud, and never forget, if this job was easy, everybody'd be doing it. But they're not. We're not crazy. This is a great career. It'll feed your families for a lifetime.
