Sales is one of the most time-consuming activities in your company. And it’s tricky because it’s nuanced. SDRs and AEs have a way of scoping out nuanced signals and making personal connections that AI can’t (yet) match. We’re also seeing a recent resurgence in cold calling as an effective strategy for selling.
Yes, we want to keep the human connection in sales. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be smart about it. You’ve probably already investigated a few options to enable your sales team to automate repetitive tasks. Perhaps you’ve already invested in a sales tech stack.
In this article, we’ll look at a few plays or workflows that could help your team save time and target prospects more accurately.
Play 1: Source accurate contact info (lead gen)
Before you can do anything else sales-related, you obviously need contacts. We’re not talking about downloading random company contact lists from the internet (which is probably illegal and highly inaccurate). We’re talking about trustworthy, up-to-date contact details from secure databases.
You need the right contacts, with the correct info provided in a privacy-compliant format.
Many sales teams waste time and money sourcing badly targeted and inaccurate contact information. No matter how big the top of your sales funnel is, if you start with low-quality data, you won’t see a high return on investment (ROI).
With bad contact info, your team will waste time calling numbers that don’t exist or talking to people who aren’t potential buyers.
It’s also important to fill each and every field (e.g., phone number, high school, recent LinkedIn post content) so you can accurately search, filter, segment, and personalize your outreach campaigns.
Here’s our favorite lead gen automation play:
1. Use a LinkedIn-based lead gen software to source contact info
We’ve used many prospecting platforms, including Wiza, ContactOut, Lusha, and Hunter. From our experience, Lusha and Hunter have about a 50/50 accuracy rate, while ContactOut just doesn’t cut it. We now mostly use Wiza, as it provides the most accurate contact information.
Instead of manually searching for decision-makers and their most up-to-date contact details, you can open up a platform like Wiza that sources all that info in one place for you.
2. Qualify leads using dynamic filters
Besides narrowing your search by standard parameters like job title and industry, we also recommend filtering specifics like subrole and skills. Why?
A person’s role and responsibilities at their company often far outstretch their LinkedIn experience descriptions. Subroles and skills help you better understand their pain points and the solutions they may be looking for.
3. Integrate and automatically populate your CRM
With hours saved on research and data capture, your team can boost productivity even further by automatically populating your CRM from your filtered database.
Many contact database tools enable Salesforce and HubSpot integration. But if you’re using other software for CRM, like Monday or Notion, you can automatically populate these using an automation platform like Zapier.
Play 2: Personalize cold calls
Cold calling sounds fierce, but it’s just calling potential customers about things they’re likely interested in buying. Calling a marketing-qualified lead is easier because they’ve usually provided their contact details and are already product-aware.
The better your prospecting in Play 1, the easier your cold calls should be.
Arguably, all you need to make a discovery call is a name and a number. But the more personalized the call is, the better your chances are of making a sale. That’s why sales executives tend to do a lot of research before calling each prospect so they have something to work with.
Your team can automate this process, so they’ll only need to pick up the phone and start chatting.
AI calling software like Bland and Synthflow is also on the rise, fully automating the manual task of calling and speaking to prospects. This use of AI could replace call centers altogether. But you still need someone with sales expertise at your company to train your AI caller.
Our favorite cold-calling play:
1. Script your hooks
Run AI prompts in your contact info database or CRM to extract personal information from your prospects’ LinkedIn profiles and write an intro hook for your SDR. For example, extract the prospect’s most recent education experience and mention how it’s relevant to their industry.
You can also add a short summary of the prospect’s buyer profile to complete your SDR’s script.
Now, your SDR simply needs to pick up the phone and refer to the summary to provide a personalized call experience.
2. Set an email automation after the call
We like to send a personalized email to the prospect immediately after them taking our call. This is a simple automation set to go off after the status of the deal is updated to “Contact Made.”
The email contains parameters that include personalized details and a call to action like start your trial.
Play 3: Hyper-personalize outreach emails
Email automation platforms enable you to create and track sequences. This involves personalizing the emails with prospect info and setting up timeframes for email sending.
Hyper-personalization takes this a step further by dynamically adjusting the content of each email based on specific parameters you set. With AI agents now also growing into the market, you can literally automate your sales team with video avatars.
Here’s our hyper-personalization play:
1. Create your AI sales agent
Use AI prompts to analyze each prospect and come up with tailored email content or only some key phrases. We used Genesy to do this and found that hyper-personalization prompts work best with shorter phrases as opposed to writing an entire email.
If you’re looking into creating your own video AI agent, you can try software like Nesti to create a replica. A replica is a lifelike avatar version of you that speaks on your behalf. This means you can script a piece of text with dynamic personalization fields and generate a hyper-personalized video for each of your prospects – even in other languages.
2. Build your sales workflow
Next, you can add the various building blocks of your campaign. This may include:
- An automated LinkedIn request.
- A personalized LinkedIn message.
- A one-day delay.
- An email with a bespoke AI-generated replica speaking to them in a video.
You can also make the building blocks in your sales outreach workflow dependent on previous actions. For example, you could set a requirement that they accept your LinkedIn request before the message and email are sent.
Play 4: Analyze discovery calls
Sales teams are often so packed with tasks that it’s too much of an effort to actually analyze discovery calls. And it’s so important to learn from the sales pitches that went well, and those that didn’t go so well.
You can use an AI notetaker that creates a transcript and once-off summary and analysis of your call. This is super handy to get a quick overview of how each call went and what action items you need to attend to.
Another option is to upload your meeting recordings to an AI data interpretation platform like Breyta. We use Breyta to garner rich insights from customer calls and interact with the data directly.
How does it work?
- You can ask it questions about certain customers or compare different calls to find common phrases used and pain points mentioned.
- Breyta automatically generates overall insights about your product and individual insights about each prospect.
Play 5: Create lead gen forms
Besides using contact info databases to get accurate prospect details (“Play 1”), you can also garner first-party data using your own lead gen forms. You may want to promote gated content or run promotional giveaways that require potential leads to fill out their details.
Form building can take a long time, especially when you want to show specific fields based on previous inputs.
You could use basic form builders like Google Forms or Typeform for this, but smart form builders will save you time and provide a better user experience. Whereas these conventional form builders can handle “if you get this answer, then show that field” types of input, a smart form builder like Feathery lets you connect your form with multiple complex data points.
1. Generate a form with AI
We really enjoy using Feathery’s AI form builder. Simply type a prompt explaining what kind of form you’d like to build, and it’ll create the entire thing from scratch for you. Quickest form setup ever.
From here on, you can save and tweak the project to create the perfect form.
2. Set up advanced conditional logic workflows
Long forms take longer to fill out, which increases the risk of user abandonment simply because your lead may not have the time to fill out all their details.
From the moment the prospect fills in their email address, we use Feathery’s APIs to start pulling from our existing CRM database. We don’t show certain form fields if any of the existing info is already present and last updated less than 6 months ago.
If the info might be outdated, we show the fields and they automatically get merged in our CRM once the form is submitted.
This automated approach improves our lead’s experience, decreases form abandonment, and saves our sales team a few hours of manual data entry per day.
Dream it, build it, automate it
In many business processes, including sales, doing more of the same seems the logical answer to increasing revenue. But if you want to see consistent results, try one of our sales automation plays above and let us know how it went in the discussion below.
Conversational AI tech has created many opportunities for sales teams to improve their workflows and become more productive. While some tech aims to replace human resources in sales, it’s a game-changer for human SDRs to generate more personalized business opportunities.
If you’re using an existing, delicately balanced tech stack that you’re not ready to move away from, try an automations platform like Zapier to tie the loose ends. It’s highly compatible with most software, easy to use, and can be integrated into CRMs and contact databases.
Commonly asked questions
How can I ensure the contact information I use for sales outreach is accurate?
Start by using trusted LinkedIn-based lead generation tools like Wiza, which has a high accuracy rate for up-to-date contact details. Avoid downloading random contact lists, as they can be inaccurate and legally risky. Using platforms that integrate directly with your CRM allows for dynamic filtering and automated population, saving time and ensuring your data is reliable and actionable.
What’s the best way to personalize cold calls for better results?
Personalization starts with detailed research. Use AI tools to extract key insights from LinkedIn profiles, like recent posts or skills, and create a tailored script for your SDRs. This allows them to start conversations with relevant hooks that resonate with prospects. Additionally, follow up with a personalized email immediately after the call, automating the process to save time and maintain momentum.
How can I automate email outreach while maintaining a personal touch?
Leverage email automation platforms with hyper-personalization features. These tools allow you to dynamically adjust content based on specific parameters, such as the prospect’s role or recent activity. You can even create AI-driven video avatars using software like Nesti to deliver personalized video messages. Combine these tools with workflows that include automated LinkedIn requests or delayed email sequences for a seamless, human-like experience.
One Response
Such an insightful article, thank you so much!