#001: How to build your target lists

Welcome to part 1 of our series on outbound sales. How to create more pipeline by sending the right message to the right person at the right time through the right channel.

Part 1: How to build your target lists (right person) ← This post

Part 2: Write messaging that gets replies (right message)

Part 3: Get your message delivered (right channel, right time)

Part 4: How to personalize your messaging

Read time: 4 Minutes

Earlier this week I posted on LinkedIn a simple approach to get more meetings with your ideal clients. I'm now going to take it a step further and show you how to create your target lists. You’ll also find message templates to improve your reply rates.

If you know any other experienced or aspiring biotech sales professionals, please share this newsletter with them.

There are 2 types of people we are going to identify.

1. Warm contacts (people who know you)

2. Cold contacts (people who don’t know you)

Warm Contacts

Let's prioritize our warm contacts first since they are already familiar with us and more likely to respond.

The most common places to find these people are in your CRM and LinkedIn. Examples of warm contacts:

• Current customers

• Former customers

• Closed lost opportunities

• Leads in your CRM

• Former colleagues

• Other sales reps you know

The strategy for warm contacts is to simply ask them for a referral. If they fit your ideal client, then they may just ask to meet. Here is a message you can steal:

If you need help getting verified emails for these contacts, the next section will show you how.

Cold Contacts

Cold outreach is a lot more complicated than reaching out to people who already know who you are. We’ll go deeper on this topic in later editions of this newsletter. For now, I’ll show you how to quickly build a target list.

You’ll need LinkedIn and the Apollo Chrome extension to do this.

• Step 1: Search LinkedIn for your ideal personas

• Step 2: Use the Apollo Chrome extension to select the people you want to target and save them to a list

• Step 3: Click the “verified email” or “request email” button

• Step 4: Start reaching out to your newly created list

3 Ways to Improve Reply Rates for Cold Email

Short Subject Line

Data shows that 3-word subject lines are more likely to get opened.

Here is an article from Lavender that covers this topic in more detail.

Personalize

Personalize the first sentence of your outreach. This sentence is the first thing that will catch your recipient's attention and make them want to read the rest of your email. You’ll want to personalize based off of something related to that person or their company. Ex: hiring, funding, recent publication, new role, etc…

Problem vs Product

Don’t write a full email about your product/service and capabilities. Your prospect doesn’t care. They want to solve the current problems they face. Your message should highlight those problems you solve and lead them to your solution.

Steal this Template

Take Action

There are many other techniques you can use to create lists. The goal of these approaches is to keep things as simple as possible. It’s more important to get started than to wait for perfection.

That’s all for now. See you next week!

P.S. Thanks for reading this far! Our goal is to help you take your sales career to the next level. Let us know what you want to learn more about so we can best serve you.