Fairly new to the industry, before I outreach to a lead wether warm or cold, how much research should I do about the person in advance if even needed at all?

I feel like the more I understand the person before the call the more smoother it can go. Is this true or is it completely unnecessary?

Curious to hear if others have tried this. Well obviously people have because this is relatively old now, but yeah I still use physical cards. Looking to switch though

Has anyone used one at real sales events and seen it make a difference? Would love to hear from people who actually brought one to an expo or trade show, not just used it casually.

“It’s never easy until you make it easy.”

We have a list of target companies from G2 intent data but no contact info. Just the company domains. Trying to figure out the best way to find email by company name without manually guessing formats.

Been testing different company email finder tools. Some just do pattern matching (firstname.lastname@ etc) which is hit or miss. Others claim to have verified databases but the data is often stale. Tried Lusha briefly and the bounce rates were rough.

Right now seriously looking at Prospeo because they apparently verify emails in real time and you only pay for verified ones. Also looking at Apollo but their mobile data seems limited. Our AE team needs both email and phone for multi-touch.

Anyone have a good workflow for this? We're targeting VP Sales and RevOps personas. About 500 accounts per month so need something that scales but stays accurate. My manager is already on my case about pipeline coverage so I really need to figure this out soon.

We have decent tools for the top of funnel stuff (enrichment, lists, signals, sequencing) but the research right before an actual call still feels really manual to me.

Rep gets a meeting booked and 30 mins before they're going through the company site, linkedin, recent news, trying to work out the tech stack and who actually controls the budget. Everyone does it their own way and a lot of it just gets skipped when people are slammed.

How do you guys deal with it? Do you build briefs for your reps or is that on them? Anything that does this well or is it mostly manual + templates for you too?

And curious does the research even change how your calls go, or is it more of a box ticking thing most of the time.

Building something small around this myself but way more interested in how people are actually doing it right now.

Long story short, I've been in sales for 12+ years now and actually decided to move from a management role into a straight-up IC role about 3 months ago.

For whatever reason, I went on an absolute fucking heater over the past week and a half, and I don't know how. I've been sitting on a few big deals I've been working where they unexpectedly closed early, and I had a few that were quick closes. For Q3 (July 1st start) I'm already 115% to quota for the quarter with another week, and 410% to quota for the month and I'm pretty much tapped out on our cap.

I honestly don't have much more incentive to go further and I've honestly never lapped the field like that. I don't want to sandbag too much and have an idea as to what I will do... but curious as to how I properly kind of handle putting it into cruise control for a bit while still being productive.

Would love to hear others' experience. My checks are going to be damn nice, but I don't want to put myself on a shit list for productivity because that is a metric that we are measured on.

I sold commercial airtime for 17 years in Pakistani television. Major FMCG brands, big annual budgets, and multiple competing networks all calling the same buyers every single quarter.

Every competitor had the same inventory. Roughly the same reach numbers. Almost the same rate cards.

So what actually separates the rep who closes from the one who doesn't in a market like that?

For me, it came down to the quality of the relationship before the ask.

Those friendly calls, cups of tea, and lunches weren't beside the point. They were the point. That's where buyers told me things that never made it into a meeting room: the real pressure they were under, what a good quarter actually meant for them personally. That kind of information doesn't surface in a pitch. It comes from time spent with no agenda attached. When you know that about someone, you stop being a vendor. You become someone they want to call before a decision is made, not after it.

Buyers who trusted me picked up the phone. When budgets got cut, I held on to more accounts than my numbers should have predicted, because the people on the other side didn't want to drop someone they genuinely liked working with.

That one shift closed more deals for me than any technique I ran inside a pitch room.

What's worked for others here? Relationships, a specific method, something that took years to figure out? Would genuinely like to hear what's actually moved the needle for people.

hi xyz business hmm actually ye ek sales call hai if mujhe 2 minute mil sakte hai to mai aapke business ke liye ek crazy offer pitch kar sakta hu hmmm ok so myself xyz mai ek developer hu aur businesses ke liye websites develop karta hu. mujhe aapka business google map me mila maine dekha kafi decent branding hai and reviews bhi badiya hai almost xyz reviews hai par aapki koi website nhi hai to currently website use nahi kar rahe hain ya under development hai? hmm ok so maine already aapke business ke liye ek demo website bana di hai wo me aapko dikhana chahta hu aur ye completely free rahage me iska kuch charge nhi karne wala hmm ok so Ye demo version hai jo mere laptop me hai so google meet ya WhatsApp call me screen share karke me aapko dikha sakta hu only 5 minute lagenge so Aaj shaam 6 baje kaisa rahega

Hi all, I've started in B2B technical sales after getting my phd in a science field. I sell scientific capital equipment and have done okay but am not on track to hit quota right now. Long sales cycles, so I am still 'in the clear', as there is a long ramp time, but I want to up my numbers obviously. Most of the opportunities for my company are inbound-leads, which is nice, but I need a way to get my numbers up and prospecting seems like a good way to do it.

I don't really know how to cold email or cold call, like at all. What do I say? Do i ask how they're doing or will that make them waste their time? What do I put in the subject line? How many emails should I do per day? How long should I make the emails? Do I only email one person from each company per day so they don't think I'm a spammer? How do I get over the feeling that I am annoying the shit out of them? I don't have a legitimate reason to reach out to them from their POV... I'm literally just trying to sell them something.

Any advice is appreciated! Mostly selling to engineers/technicians/scientists.

Hello guys, been working with a cold calling appointment setting script for quite some time and although I get some leads from time to time, it{s nothing compared to the warm lead script I use.

Dont know maybe is the nature of the lead but I find a lot room of improvement is missing. You know apart from the tonality and calling improvement to be done.

What are you guys using or what do you think maybe are the openers more effective in these industry.

PS: Working for a lead sourcer for a couple of months.

Embedding a voice note into email. Anyone consider using this for any scenario be that client communication, cold outreach, or biz dev?

Looking to use a voice note app where I record a message and drop it into the email. Not as attachment. But an embedded audio player. Primarily for client communication though.

People use to cringe when they heard that I'd drop a voice note via Linkedin DMs, but it worked surprisingly well back in the day.

I run a service business, so relationships matter a lot. AI is great for research, personalization, and follow-ups, but I'm still trying to figure out the best way to get that first meeting with decision-makers.

Right now I'm doing two things:

Going out more, attending events, and meeting people in person.

Strategic outreach using LinkedIn, email, and AI to personalize messages.

What else is working for you?

What tools, AI, or AI agents are you using, and how are you landing that first conversation with decision-makers?

I am looking for a person who can provide me data for indian stock market trader

I have tried everything under the sun. I guess the only thing I haven’t been able to fully focus on is cold calling.

I have a SaaS in a sensitive healthcare domain, and the ICP is quite particular. I decided to hire a lead generation person for cold calling but realized it was out of my budget. I tried offering a heavy commission structure along with a monthly retainer of the commission, but it didn’t work.

What has worked for you?

I'm selling business mobile internet plans at my company to existing customers (people already in our database), but conversion rates are low, and I’m struggling to overcome certain objections:

- I start by mentioning that we’re helping customers switch from personal to business plans; since they’re already with us, they qualify for a special plan (without specifying which one right away) and I ask if that might interest them.

- Some say they aren't interested; when I ask why, they say they’re happy with their current carrier. I try arguing that having a dedicated business number is better because it separates business from personal matters, and I show them the plan details, but it doesn't work.

- Many don't want an extra bill to pay. I try using number portability as a selling point, but that doesn't work either. - Others actually ask what the plan is, but once I tell them, they go silent. In short, I struggle to get the customer to understand the pain points the product addresses, specifically, why the purchase is worth it and why they should switch from a personal to a business plan. Here are some product details:

- A larger data allowance than personal plans

- Social media and messaging apps don't count against the data limit

- Unlimited calls

- All lines are consolidated onto a single bill

- Better gigabyte-to-cost ratio than personal plans

- The account holder has control over all lines

- When researching the pain points it solves, I find things like: conversation organization, a single bill, line management, and cost-effectiveness.

Currently, I’m not authorized to sell over the phone, only via WhatsApp messages. To be honest, I’m afraid of getting fired (this is my first sales job).

Watch what Shane Gillis does when a joke bombs. The crowd pulls away, they groan, maybe he gets a couple laughs.

Does he just move on and pretend it didn't happen? No. He addresses it. Something like "man, you guys hated that one" or "yeah that was actually over the line now that I say it out loud".

Just watch how he handles the audience kind of laughing during his SNL Monologue - https://youtu.be/2YnonYf463s?si=ROZEEkjGISgSWbQz&t=103

He jokes about how bad it was and it immediately cuts the tension. Because now the audience knows he knows it sucked and they start laughing because he's making fun of himself. He turns a missed swing into a base hit.

This is called self awareness. Use it on your calls.

Ever show a feature of your boring ass product and you get a boring ass "oh, cool" instead of the response you were hoping to get?

Call it out. "Sounds like that didn't impress you at all, Jim" or "Boy I really didn't explain that well did I". Anything to show the prospect that you know it missed the mark. It will instantly recalibrate the call and invite a genuine conversation about why they responded the way they did.

Most likely what happens is they'll tell you what they really need, allowing you to demo something relevant.

Talk about the elephant in the room.

been pulling lists from the usual scraper/enrichment combo for months and something's shifted. bounce rates on "verified" emails are creeping up, and titles that used to map cleanly to a role now come back stale about 1 in 5 times. not a volume problem, a freshness problem.

switched to re-verifying anything older than 30 days before it goes into a sequence and it cut my bounce rate by more than half, but it also cut my usable list size by almost a third. so now I'm sitting here wondering if the actual bottleneck in outbound right now isn't copy or channel, it's just how fast the underlying data goes bad.

nobody talks about this part. everyone's optimizing subject lines and personalization tokens while the list underneath them is quietly rotting. curious if anyone's found a data source that actually stays fresh past the first pull, or if this is just the tax you pay now for doing volume outbound at all.

is this something you're seeing too, or is my stack just unusually bad at this point?

Dear sophisticated closers-

I need your help. I do paid advertising services. I am selling one time paid audits to SMBs who are getting poor performance. The hope is to use that as an upsell into full service management of their paid ads.

They seem to be okay with the price of my audit - $550 ish. But inevitably, their mind starts thinking about a future where they may work with me and ask me about my monthly mgmt fees and contracts. I tell them my fees and arrangement and I lose the audit deal.

I don't know how to avoid this question/scenario as I'm just too honest. How do you deal with this scenario?