Outbound sales tactics

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.

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.

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.

No cold calling, email automation or ads: every customer is closed by an outside rep walking into restaurants, modeled on solar, pest control, roofing and pharma field sales. Rationale: competitors all cold-call with the same AI stack (data providers, Clay, ElevenLabs) so owners are bombarded; in-person builds relationships ('us having a beer') that cold callers can't beat and counters SMB churn from price-switching. Ambition is a sales org 'in the thousands'. Expansion is market by market.

After leaving Cluely, with no product, he went on sales calls with companies and promised outcomes: 'We're going to get you a lot of views, we're going to get you users, and we're going to make you money.' He avoided 'UGC program', 'influencer marketing' or 'run your socials', which sound lame and confuse less tapped-in buyers. Companies with traction are targeted ('we work with winners'). His Cluely track record helped.

After the waitlist flopped, weeks of guerrilla marketing: a big push on Hacker News, manually scraping emails and posts, and reaching out with heartfelt messages ('Hey, I think you should use this'). Continued manual grinding from April to December with two people.

Amar (ex tech sales) cold emailed and cold called maid service owners, plus one partnership, to reach the first ~100 customers. Stopped around 100 customers when lead tracking/follow-up became unmanageable for him alone; did not hire someone to continue outbound. Advises only doing this if you're good on the phone.

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.

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.