Outbound sales tactics

Quota ~6 new locations/month (~$36K new ARR at ~$6K ACV). Rep keeps 30-40% of year-one revenue on new sales. 'Activity guarantee' instead of a base: reps who knock doors and set appointments earn ~$36-40K/year even with no closes. Target ~70 touch points/week (non-unique; repeat visits count), reduced by closing activity; at 10 demos/week no more walk-ins required. Good reps are promoted within ~6 months to salaried W2 market leads with no commission. Everyone gets a small equity grant vesting after two years.

Started with ~5 marketing assistants, grew to ~25, each pushed to contact 100 influencers a day (~2,000/day; real output 40-70 on bad days). Assistants hired through an outside staffing company. Outreach is by email, not DMs (DMs are rate-limited and work mainly with a big personal brand). Creators in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain; not picky as long as the creator could fit the app into their video at a decent CPM. Assistants send a Calendly link for a manager call; managers close. Signing goals of 50+, later 100 creators a month. Funnel: ~10% reply, a few book a call, ~1 in 1,000 signs. Outreach tracked in an internal system.

Scraped creator email addresses from Instagram bios (creators list them to get work). Loaded 1,000 Gmail accounts into a shared inbox; an internal script sends 10-30 emails per account per day, used in bursts when more creatives are needed. VAs handle replies ('Yes, I'm interested') and move them down a diagrammed flow: VA emails back with a video pre-recorded by the founder, then moves them to Telegram. Built in-house over years; guest calls it 'a little bit black hat-y'. Host notes Instantly/Smartlead and creator-list platforms now do this.

After seed investors said to prove he could sell another 5-10 customers himself, the founder physically walked into stores, filled in the contact forms on operators' websites, and phoned stores. The opener for stores without delivery: a first-of-its-kind gig-economy integration (Uber, DoorDash) giving two-way pickup/delivery logistics, so for a nominal fee they could add delivery revenue with no labor or CapEx. Once in, pitched the hardware and point of sale.

When a prospect asked in the first conversation how they would know usage, first offered a CSV export from the database, then made a mock AI image of an admin platform, then hired an outsourced dev team in Sri Lanka to build it quickly, and showed a staging demo at the next meeting. The dashboard shows an org (e.g. Asbury) how many members use the app, how many blocking rules they created and how many have an accountability partner, fully anonymized. The host tells another founder the same: get the sale first, then build (e.g. a quick AI-built beta of a web version).

Founder writes cold emails himself, genuine and personal: 'Hey, Jason Mathew, founder of LeadMeNot, created this because of my own struggles. Can we talk?' Follows up persistently asking for just 15 minutes, gets on a video call with slides ready, and keeps it a genuine conversation. Tracks everything in HubSpot and keeps expanding the pipeline (150-200+ deals). In month two of testing Sales.co, an AI cold email service, unsure yet if it beats doing it himself.

Lead with a free pilot of 1-2 months (up to 90 days), no longer. Before starting, agree tightly on what success looks like (e.g. even one person finding value) so no one looks back at 30 or 60 days and says only 1 of 10 used it. Example: a church men's ministry focused on sexual wholeness did a ~2-month trial; the group leader then pitched the elders, and church leadership asked to roll it out to everyone; he sent a contract with 1-year to 3-year options. Advice to another founder piloting with schools: bring a clean pitch and a recommended path (e.g. 'let's do a 60-day pilot, here's the rollout, here's how we'll measure success'), and don't be open-ended.

Reach the personal network and DM people on Twitter to get them on calls, paying them if needed. Use The Mom Test: never ask 'would you use this?' or 'do you like my idea?'. Ask 'How are you solving this problem? Walk me through the last time you solved it. How much time or money did it cost? What would happen if you did nothing?' Build once you hear a shared, common painful problem.

Use the platform's public agency/partner directory (Shopify agency partner directory, Klaviyo partner directory) as a ready-made lead list: it ranks agencies by size and influence, and since all listed agencies use the same platform they can be assumed to share the same problem. Zac recommends this for any industry: most key platforms have an agency or partner directory page.

Search Instagram (and other platforms) for hashtags matching the use case (#wedding, #birthdayparty), list 250-300 potential customers, and send each a very short cold message (2-3 sentences max) that grabs attention and pitches trying the product at their event. Go to wherever your users are active (Reddit, TikTok, YouTube) and learn the platform, since the validation channel becomes the main marketing channel if it works. Brian's rule of thumb: if you haven't been banned from these platforms at least twice, you haven't messaged enough.

Did cold outreach to an Upwork coach on LinkedIn and offered him $1,000 to get on a call and effectively be paid to become a user. Playbook: make each pitch highly personalized, research the connector, reference their work, even send a long Loom video; one affiliate is worth far more effort than a single subscriber.

Relationship managers once cold-emailed 50-100 influencers a day. What worked better: build a credible Instagram profile (decent posts and follower count, maybe a blue check, many mutual follows with influencers) so you look like one of them, then DM. Keep DMing influencers regularly just to build connections.