Hey there, it’s Isaac from Leads to Earnings. Welcome to the newsletter.

(est. 4 minute read)

Today I will be going over:

• How to find clients like Captain Ahab

• Prioritizing to simplify decision making

• I will also share a few cold email links and tips.

Hopefully you enjoy it.

Actionable Cold Email Tip

If you’ve been in the outbound loop lately you’ll know, cold email deliverability is disrupted yet again.

Google recently announced new AI security updates impacting Gmail users across their user base from enterprise through small business.

This deliverability screw tightening is decimating the cold email email landscape and has caused a huge ripple in the market.

Many of my competitors have closed shop and B2Bs are giving up on cold email all together.

My view?

Cold email is certainly still viable - I’m booking meetings for myself and clients every week.

Is it getting harder?

Yes, absolutely.

The only way to stay alive in tough market is to keep competing and innovating.

And because you are a member of my outbound community, I’m going to to share a few ways I’m innovating through these times of uncertainty.

In any time of market disruption, there’s always going to be gaps in the market.

The key is to first identify gaps and then create a strategy to capitalize on those gaps.

I’ve noticed a few themes in the cold email market over the last 12 months.

Reply rates have gone down. The inbox is more crowded then ever.

ESPs Google and Microsoft are blocking emails before they even get into the inbox if there’s a remote chance they are spam.

This is a result of security measures, but also the volume of people doing automated cold outbound.

Despite all this, I’m still seeing business leaders all over the world recommend using cold email to acquire new customers.

(If you are curious, Google “Sam Altman how to get your first 100 users” to see the OpenAI chief’s recommendations. Hint: he recommends doing email outreach)

The consistent theme I see across these recommendations is doing outreach to a targeted list of great fit prospects.

This is where so many people go wrong. They think they can spray and pray and customers magically appear.

In today’s landscape, you need to be efficient with your outreach. This means focusing on high intent great fit buyers.

Keeping this in mind, I’ve been doubling down on Dream 100 outreach. Consider Dream 100 as the top 100 accounts you want to work with. These are the best fit customers that can change the course of your business.

To win Dream 100 customers, you can’t just assume they’ll work with you because you send them a good cold email.

Many others are vying to work with them as well. But this is where the competition stops.

They’re only willing to send automated messages. They aren’t willing to do the extra work to get their attention.

With Dream 100, you’re actually hunting the prospect. This means tracking them down like Ahab tracked down Moby Dick.

Captain Ahab wasn’t just sailing the open sea with line out in the water fishing for Moby Dick. He was on a maniacal hunt. Doing everything he could to find, target and catch his whale.

That’s my mindset when it comes to Dream 100. You want to track this prospect down and get them to respond either yes or no because a “no” is better than no response.

Up until now, these concepts are a bit abstract. I’m sure you want something actionable that you can use to do this type of outbound motion.

So here’s what I’m doing. This is a work in progress and I’ll keep writing about this process as its validated. But here’s the gist of it:

1. Build dream 100 list with all relevant contacts at the company. This means emails and social profiles.

2. Use Clay to score the leads for fit

3. Prioritize your outreach based on your scores

4. Create your outbound cadence across 14 days with daily touches

5. Connect with your prospects on LinkedIn and other relevant social platforms

6. Outreach across channels leading with value. This means dropping your lead magnets without asking for anything in return.

7. Once you’ve dropped a few value bombs, send them something custom. This could be free work, a loom video or another custom asset. Include a “book time with me” call to action in this outreach.

8. Continue to follow up until you get an answer. Yes or no.

9. If no response after 14 days, put them on your nurture track and build out the next iteration of your list.

If you’re wondering about how to adopt this framework for your specific use case, feel free to drop me a line by replying to this email.

Hope this helps

Useful Bits

• Tweet of the Day: (link)

• Case study: Adding a 240k/ARR Client for a Marketing Agency (link)

• Quote of the week: "Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers: They all say, 'I didn't quit.' — Ben Horowitz

• Quick bite-sized pointer: Prioritization is as much about reduction as is its about addition. The higher up the ladder you go, the more opportunities present themselves. It can be easy to fill your calendar with busy work, but without the time for high leverage activity, then it's hard to actually move the needle to grow the business. To decide if the action is worthwhile, I ask myself this question: does this activity make the boat go faster or just keep the lights on? If fast, do. If not faster, don't do. This might sound like caveman logic but my recent focus has been to simplify decision making frameworks to create more consistent inputs, outputs and results across the business from sales and marketing to fulfilment. So far, it has resulted in quicker feedback loops to see if decisions were good and should be doubled down on or adjusted.

How I Can Help You

If you like this newsletter and want to work with me, there are a few ways we can do so:

1. I have a ton of free content that will help you get more clients on my YouTube channel. I post insights from operating high converting cold email campaigns for dozens of B2B companies that have added hundreds of thousands in recurring revenue.

2. If you are looking to improve your cold outbound skills but don’t want to hire anyone, I have a free 71-page course that teaches everything you need to know about cold email.

3. If you want a custom cold email campaign specifically designed for your business & ideal target audience, I have a few slots available to show you how it works. Book in here and on the call I will deliver a full 5-angle cold email campaign for you to use to bring on more high paying clients.

4. If you’d like to hear about how I can help you and your company grow, you can book a call with me here. I might be able to help you grow faster, or I might be able to refer you to someone who can.

Share this with 3 people and get a free training showing you how to convert more cold prospects into warm leads with cold email.

I hope you enjoyed this brief email.

Talk later,

Isaac