⛰ Intent-Based Prospecting

huge shifts in outbound playbooks

Author

Vlad Oleksiienko
November 21, 2023

Today’s edition is brought to you by Reply — the AI-powered sales engagement and cold outreach automation platform to create new opportunities at scale, automatically.

Hey there,

Welcome to the SaaS Hill, a newsletter that tries to predict the future of SaaS.

Let's discuss Intent-Based Prospecting 🔗.

⭐️️ Intro

Sales prospecting and outreach have changed a lot since 2015.

Google and Yahoo spam policies, new sending limits, domain reputation, spam filters, AI emails, email outreach automation, dozens of tools and tactics.

Tons of similar emails in decision-makers’ inboxes.

Thus, open and reply rates drop down.

As a result, we can observe a rise of creative intent-based cold outreach strategies.

Here is what we will discuss today:

  • 12 predictions about Intent-Based Prospecting

  • 150+ intent-based prospecting products

  • 30+ intent-based prospecting ideas

  • list of 100+ cold email templates

  • 10 useful links

  • 3 related trend reports

🤔 Predictions

  1. Outbound and cold outreach are evolving: across multiple domains, email inbox warm-up, sending limits, anti-spam systems, spam rates, liquid syntax, domain rotation, link and open tracking.

  2. Google introduced a new anti-spam policy. By February 2024, Gmail will start requiring that bulk senders: Authenticate their email, Enable easy unsubscription, Ensure they’re sending wanted email. A similar anti-spam policy has been introduced by Yahoo. Consequently, more email providers are likely to follow this trend soon.

  3. Consequently, sending cold emails at scale will become more challenging, prompting changes in our behavior:

    1. We will invest more time in researching our ICPs and buyer personas.

    2. We will allocate more time to list building and data research.

    3. We will avoid adding non-ICP contacts to our sequences.

    4. We will add fewer contacts to our sequences.

    5. We will dedicate more time to personalizing our emails.

  4. These changes will essentially shift our focus from quantity to quality, resulting in significant alterations in sales development playbooks:

    1. Reduced email touches and follow-ups in sequences, cadences, and cold outreach campaigns.

    2. Increased non-email touches in sequences.

    3. More personalized email interactions.

    4. Longer intervals between email follow-ups.

    5. Emphasis on low-friction CTAs.

    6. Shorter cold emails.

  5. With these new anti-spam policies, sales teams will adopt more sales channels: cold calls, LinkedIn connections, Twitter interactions, WhatsApp messaging, direct mail outreach and gifting, offline and online events, and conferences. Different sales teams will combine various approaches to maximize their effectiveness.

  6. Thus, multichannel will become more important than ever before

  7. Given the reduced effectiveness of generic cold outreach, GTM teams will try to reinvent their sales development playbooks and cold outreach tactics. Some of these strategies include:

    1. AI-driven personalized emails at scale.

    2. Leveraging outbound as a growth function.

    3. Implementing no-code prospecting.

    4. Adopting intent-based cold outreach.

    5. Incorporating multi-channel cold outreach.

  8. Intent-based cold outreach could prove to be an interesting method for booking more meetings while targeting fewer prospects and reducing sending volumes. Intent-based (also known as trigger-based or signal-based) cold outreach relies on specific events signaling that a company/account/prospect/opportunity is ready to purchase software, products, or services. Consequently, the focus shifts from bombarding every company to concentrating on those expressing interest in your offerings.

  9. There are already a few crystallized categories:

    1. Technographics intent > reach out to companies that use a specific technology. e.g. Hubspot.

    2. Job changes intent > reach out to customers who changed their company and used your product there.

    3. Hiring intent > reach out to companies that are actively hiring right now.

    4. LinkedIn post likers  > reach out to leads that are active on LinkedIn.

    5. Social listening intent > reach out to leads that mention specific keywords on the internet.

    6. Dark funnel intent > reach out to companies that visit your website.

    7. Warm intros > reach out to common connections for an intro.

  10. Then these signals could be used as a reason for outreach in cold emails. For example:

    1. Technographics > I noticed that you use Shopify as your e-commerce platform.

    2. Job changes > Congratulations on your new role at Acme!

    3. Hiring > I saw that your company is actively hiring salespeople.

    4. Social listening > I noticed on Twitter that you were looking for a software engineer.

    5. Warm > A friend of yours, John, mentioned you might be interested in our PPC services.

  11. Thus, intent-based cold outreach can address two major issues in sales development simultaneously:

    1. Personalization at scale > There's no need for fake intro lines.

    2. Relevancy at scale > Buying signals, interest in specific topics, etc., may indicate that they are actively evaluating services to address their problems.

  12. Cold outreach will still be an effective sales strategy in this decade, but we need to adapt to new challenges and buyer behavior.

🏢 Products

Intent-based Outreach Tools

Check out 150+ tools and products for intent-based prospecting across 12 different categories here:

Need even more ideas? Then, check out this list of 30+ intent-based prospecting ideas:

Intent-based Prospecting Ideas

Also, I'm happy to share the presentation I prepared for Reply's SDE'23 Conference that uncovers 5 creative strategies to build targeted lead lists for cold outreach(trigger-based list prospecting is one of them):

  • waterfall email finders

  • social selling

  • warm intros and referral sales

  • flip the idea of ICP

  • trigger-based list building

Need some cold email templates to fuel your intent-based cold outreach?

Check out this list of 100+ cold email templates 👇

  1. 🏔️ No Code Prospecting > is this an era of outbound 3.0?

  2. 🏔️ Mutual Action Plans and Deal Rooms > collaborate with buyers to close deals faster

  3. 🏔️ Generative AI in B2B Sales > empowering B2B sales with AI

Thanks for reading. See you next time 👋
Best, Vlad

Three ways I can help you scale your SaaS business

💻️ List of 18.000 SaaS companies for cold outreach, VCs and marketers
🚀 List of 170+ SaaS growth tactics to never run out of ideas
📝 20 Curated SaaS lists to expand the horizons of your curiosity