Proprietary Outreach Best Practices
February 08, 2023
by a searcher from Rice University - Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business in Houston, TX, USA
Hi Everyone,
Wanted to get some thoughts/feedback on proprietary outreach. It's a numbers game (as far as I understand).
What are your thoughts around what to include in an outreach email?
Do you include something unique about the business? Owner?
Generic emails in a drip marketing campaign (using software like reply.io)?
Or a combination of both?
Thanks in advance for your sharing your thoughts & experience!
Best,
Adam
from University of West Florida in West Palm Beach, FL, USA
Customization: personalize emails and letters by generating unique content based on information about the business and owner. You can provide Gemini with details from ZoomInfo, the company website, or other sources, and it can create tailored messages that resonate with the recipient.
Persistence: assist in writing a series of follow-up emails with varying content and tones, ensuring your message stays fresh and engaging while maintaining a consistent brand voice.
Timing: help you craft emails that subtly address potential concerns or pain points that might make a business owner more receptive to your offer at a given time.
Building Relationships: help you draft emails that focus on building rapport and establishing trust, rather than just pitching a sale. It can suggest ways to offer value, share relevant insights, or initiate a conversation about the owner's business.
Different Approaches: can generate different types of outreach content, including emails, letters, and even phone scripts. You can experiment with various formats and styles to see what resonates best with your target audience.
Technology: can integrate with other tools, such as email tracking software, to help you monitor the effectiveness of your outreach efforts and refine your approach over time.
By leveraging AI tools, you can create more effective and personalized outreach materials that address the key takeaways from this thread above and increase your chances of success in deal sourcing.
Written with the assistance of Google’s Gemini. I recommend Gemini for Google Workspace, https://www.cloudskillsboost.google/paths/249, the examples are super helpful.
from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA
I'll add to the pile suggesting that it's a numbers game, but I'd be careful about recognizing what, exactly, you're aiming for. There's certainly a difference between growing ones network versus fishing for potential acquisitions (and everything in between and beyond). That's not to say one focus is better or worse than another, but I've talked to plenty of people who don't make the delineation in their own mind and it ends up muddying their own efforts.
More concretely, I've heard from many successful searchers that the company they ended up acquiring was sourced indirectly through a contact in their network rather than by a direct connection with the business owner themselves. The advice they gave was to focus on building a network rather than finding those leads, and they felt the effort they put into direct outreach was ultimately not as valuable as becoming friendly with people who may end up knowing someone interested in selling their business. Of course, they also said that they made those connections through their outreach program, so such activities aren't a waste of time, per se, just that they would have approached it differently. This seems to be in-line with the suggestions that it's a "focused" numbers game, where putting in effort on a per-contact basis is generally better than reaching out to more contacts, etc.
Personally, I concur with this sentiment. All of the entrepreneurship opportunities I've been involved with have come from close contacts who reached out to me when they came across something. I'm sure there's room to incorporate more broad, wide-reaching strategies, but it seems creating trusted, friendly contacts might be a good way to increase the odds of "hidden" probabilities that aren't as apparent as the more direct probabilities of just touching a ton of contacts.