Automate Your Agency

How do I 10x sales with automated outreach?

• Alane Boyd & Micah Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 19

Share episode

As business owners and leaders, we all know that scaling your business can only be achieved when sales are consistent. It doesn't take a PhD to figure that out. Unfortunately, what can feel like rocket science, is finding the time to focus on business development while you're serving your current clients AND keeping your operations moving forward.

 In this episode of Automate Your Agency, Alane Boyd and Micah Johnson reveal how automated sales outreach can help you 10x your sales without sacrificing your valuable time.

You'll learn about successful use cases that shatter the "spammy" stereotypes of sales automation and that produce results like securing six pre-conference meetings in a single day or adding 40+ connected, local business owners to your professional network.

In this episode, you'll discover:

  • How to maintain authenticity while automating your prospecting efforts
  • The power of multi-channel outreach combining email and LinkedIn
  • Strategic ways to build your prospect lists using LinkedIn Sales Navigator
  • Best practices for setting up successful outreach sequences

Whether you're a solo entrepreneur or managing a sales team, this episode will show you how to implement sales automation that feels personal, drives results, and frees up your time to focus on what matters most.

If you want to get started right away, we suggest signing up for LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Lemlist to start building and testing!

If you want help building or optimizing your automated sales strategy, contact us at workdayninja.com to learn more about our "crawl, walk, run" approach to sales automation.

If you found this episode valuable and want to help other businesses reap the rewards, would you mind leaving us a 5-star review? It will help with show rankings and give more listeners the opportunity to find our show. 

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode! Thank you and see

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links. This means that at no additional cost to you, we may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting the podcast!

For more information, visit our website at biggestgoal.ai.

Want more valuable content and helpful tips?

Explore our Courses/Programs:

Enjoy our Free Tools:

Connect with Us:

0:00:00 - (Alane): Welcome to automate your agency. Every week we bring you expert insights, practical tips, and success stories that will help you streamline your business operations and boost your growth. Let's get started on your journey to more efficient and scalable operations.

0:00:17 - (Micah): All right, so, Alane, I want to get down to brass tacks here. I have scaled the business. I have started defining my offerings. Everything's in place. And what it feels like I do all day long is manually send out prospecting sales emails. Is there a better way?

0:00:41 - (Alane): Yes. And most likely you probably put it off too, so that the time to do outreach for sales is probably 5% of the time during the week.

0:00:52 - (Micah): Oh, it's 09:00 p.m. after everybody goes to bed. Yes.

0:00:56 - (Alane): So you're scheduling those out to go out the next morning?

0:00:58 - (Micah): Yeah.

0:01:00 - (Alane): Yeah. So if you're wanting more sales, you can't figure out how to get in front of your target customer, and you can't seem to find the time to actually prioritize this, then this episode is definitely for you.

0:01:14 - (Micah): All right, so I think you pointed out something really great, which is this type of activity, Alane just gets deprioritized way more than it should. Maybe all the time I'm guilty of it. I go, I need to get this stuff done for clients. I need to get this stuff done for the team. I got to do this stuff for myself. I need to take a break at some point. And the next thing I know, it's 05:00 p.m. and I still haven't sent out any sales emails.

0:01:43 - (Alane): Unless you love sales, which is such a small percentage of people that are just dying to keep selling and prioritize that most business owners can't find the time to do it, or their sales team is just kind of willy nilly doing things because, you know, they're answering potential client questions. They're not really spending the time hunting and finding new clients. And so what we're going to be talking about is how do you find the time and make it easy so that it's happening, whether or not you found the time.

0:02:17 - (Alane): So you just have to set it up. And it's an automated sales outreach. And I know, like, the first thing that you're probably thinking is, ooh, that feels really cringey.

0:02:27 - (Micah): Well, yes and no. I feel like maybe I'm a typical founder, where I look at this and go, I know I need to do this. I know I need to make time. I start looking at the options and I get immediately overwhelmed.

0:02:43 - (Alane): Yeah. And there's software to use for this. So this goes back to uni's big thing about, it'll be a couple hundred dollars to pay for software that will do this versus your time or an employee's time trying to figure this all out. And everybody benefits from having the sales outreach go out. And there's ways to make it feel like it is you and it is personalized. Like, I'm not telling you to go spam a bunch of people and to inundate them with sales and marketing messaging. It really is like, who would you be sending an email to to get in front of? And that's who we want to target.

0:03:22 - (Micah): Yeah, I think that's a really good clarification, Alane, because we're not saying dump 10,000 leads into a system and then spam people. These are the emails that you'd be sending anyway, manually. I think a really great example of this is when we got the place in Boulder, we sent out automated emails to people around the area from me saying, hey, just showed up in the area, would like to connect with some other business owners, want to grab coffee.

0:03:56 - (Micah): And that booked us about 40 coffee dates that I went on, which I've stopped drinking coffee since then. In case anybody's wondering. It was too much, it worked too well. But I would have to write those emails out manually. Or I could set up an automation that writes those emails for me and runs while I'm doing my other work.

0:04:22 - (Alane): Yeah, and you can set a schedule so that, you know, it could be sent. Maybe you send three a day or you send 20 a day. And Micah, you touched on something that is personal that people forget to do in sales. You had just moved to an area and you were wanting to meet other business professionals. That is something. So part of what people want to do is make connections. Right? And that's what you used this automated outreach for.

0:04:50 - (Alane): It wasn't about spamming them. You wanted to meet other business owners. You used that as a way to connect with people, and it worked really well. And this. Not everybody's moving. Not everybody's like, going to, you know, make this life change, but these other personal connections can be utilized. I'm working with a company right now where the biz dev person is going to a conference in Canada. And we use that as a reason to reach out to other people in that area, in that industry that could be going in the first day, she had six people reach, respond to her and say they'd like to meet her there.

0:05:29 - (Alane): Six meetings set up before she even went. That, you know, that's what organizations are you a part of? You're probably not connected with the people that you're already in an organization with. And so you can build on these core things you already have in common with people to build a relationship with. Tell them what you do. A lot of times we forget to do that.

0:05:54 - (Micah): Yeah, I mean, I love it. I got to see it firsthand. There's no way I could make the relationships I did moving out to this area without having that in place.

0:06:04 - (Alane): Yeah. And it's so funny that people don't want to spend the couple hundred dollars a month with the software. And I've done so many calls where they decide not to move forward because they're like, well, it's 40 emails a day. I can send 40 emails a day. No, you can't. You just can't. And it's not a great use of your time. You could have 40 emails sent personalized with dynamic fields going out to those people every single day and you can focus on other things. Not that that's not important. You're actually saying, this is the most important part of my day is reaching out to these 40 people and I'm going to prioritize it by setting up this automation sequence, following up.

0:06:46 - (Alane): Most times we don't follow up with people. That could be another piece where you're building out. It's not just about the first message. You can build out a sequence of messages to automatically follow up with them. So it can be as long as you want. You can have conditioning. Yes, they clicked on something. Yes, they responded. No they didn't do something. So I want them to receive this core messaging. So this conditioning, building a sequence of follow up that is very, very powerful.

0:07:16 - (Micah): Yeah. So why wouldn't, if I have a sales team, why wouldn't I just be like, hey, sales team, figure this out.

0:07:22 - (Alane): Oh gosh. Because they're good at selling. You know, most of them aren't going to be extremely technical. And you can do a b testing where you can try different wording and know what works best. Then the sales team can utilize that and they're where their time can be focused, is really building a targeted list of people to put into this. And there's a lot of things when you do move to the software, like I don't want to sugarcoat things. Like there's a lot of setup upfront and you need to work with either your it person or somebody that has access to your domains, your emails. Like there is some setup to do in the beginning, but once that's done, and your sales team doesn't need to be a part of that. That can be all happening on their behalf.

0:08:08 - (Alane): And then setting up a few sequences. It does take some training, but I. Man, does this work really well.

0:08:15 - (Micah): I think that's such a great point to touch on, or that you just touched on, Alane, because we think sales. Oh, that goes to the sales team. But like so many things that we help our clients with, it's this multifaceted skillset that needs to happen. Like you mentioned it, you got to have a technical side to it. You mentioned messaging. You got to have a marketing side to it. You mentioned lead lists, you got to have the sales side to it.

0:08:43 - (Micah): You mentioned a b testing. You have to have an analytic side to it. So you have all these different kind of domains that need to come together to make this work. That's why a single founder struggles putting something like this together. You need all those bits of knowledge to make it work. That's why a sales team or a sales leader can struggle putting something like this together. Now, if they're a technical marketing genius salesperson, who's good at it stuff and understands systems, well, then you got it made the lottery.

0:09:21 - (Alane): We'd like to hire them. Yeah, but a lot of them they're not, and these systems can be built for them, and then they focus on the targeted customer and getting them into the platform. So I want to touch on this piece, because it is two different pieces that we're talking about in the sales outreach. One is building the sequence, and a sequence is, I want them to receive this email, day one, three days. I want them to receive this follow up and so forth and so on. So where can you get this list of who's going to receive these sequences?

0:09:55 - (Alane): And so that's the other piece where the sales team is a part of very much building this part of it. And there's a few different places. Number one is, who have. Have they filled out a lead form for you already? Well, that's a perfect person to get into this flow. They're already interested in your services. Number two is building a list going to. That's already going to a conference. Do you know people that are going to be going there? I think that is, like, the most underused way to connect with people.

0:10:26 - (Alane): You're already spending all this money going there. Why aren't you reaching out and setting up meetings ahead of time and making it easy on yourself? And then the third way, which I just absolutely love, and it's perfect for a sales team, is using LinkedIn sales navigator. And if you know who your target customer is, your sales team can hunt, build, list and put these leads directly into a tool. Like, and I guess we haven't mentioned, like, what are some software platforms that can be used for this automated sales outreach?

0:10:55 - (Alane): My two favorites is Lemlist and Apollo. And so you can import from sales navigator leads right into one of these software platforms and have them receive that sequence of emails directly to them.

0:11:10 - (Micah): Yeah. And these can be contacts that your sales team is already working, you can already have connections with. They might be following you like it's already warm by the nature of the.

0:11:23 - (Alane): System and there are hundreds and thousands of leads sitting there that, and you can get really savvy with LinkedIn sales Navigator. If you specialize in a certain software, you can look up companies that are using that software and then filter down. Okay, well, who do I want to contact at that company? Who is our customer that typically makes the decision to buy and build a list based on that?

0:11:49 - (Micah): Yeah. So I want to touch on one thing that you said earlier, Alane, that I think is super important. It's that once this system is built, then the sales team can help refine. Right. So you can do the A B testing, but it's not rebuilding the system. Every time you've got the system built, you've got the software set up, you've got your, your it side of it all taken care of. Now it's about getting creative on the outreach, on the campaigns, on the messaging, on the subject lines, all the valuable stuff to do the prospecting, on your offers, on your offerings.

0:12:31 - (Micah): Right. Like all of those things can now be focused on, which will generate sales and will generate leads. The lead magnets, the tools that you're providing, the courses that you're giving out, whatever it might be that gets added to the system instead of, okay, we have a new campaign now we've got to do this all over again.

0:12:52 - (Alane): Yeah, and this really is for teams of all sizes. Like, we've worked with just a single business owner where they're looking at, they're the salesperson for their company and it might just be them and one other admin. You know, we've worked with that size company to where they've got ten salespeople. And what's really cool is that when you're letting your team use this as a sales tool is you have reporting as well.

0:13:22 - (Alane): So if you have a bigger sales team and a bigger sales team could be two people, because then you have data to compare and you let them kind of play around with their own messaging and they sequencing, which I do recommend because somebody might say something a certain way that really hits a pain point with the customer and you see better results with their messaging. So that's the key here, is that you have reporting and data.

0:13:48 - (Alane): You can look at different sequencing, different target markets and see what's performing the best so that you can go towards that, whether that's a different customer that you've been targeting or different messaging in your sequence to the same target, and maybe one gets 10% better results and you can start making those changes.

0:14:06 - (Micah): Yeah, I love it. So let's say I'm a founder. I've been putting off automating my sales outreach. What do I do?

0:14:15 - (Alane): Well, definitely my recommendation is either go Lemlist or Apollo set that up. And then the next thing is sign up with sales navigator. Again, we're looking at about dollar 200 a month for these two platforms to work together. And you need to set up, I recommend for email setting up multiple domains to send from, not your main domain, because if you do get marked as spam, you don't want to screw yourself over and lose access to your main email. So you want to have some extra domains.

0:14:47 - (Alane): And it also you can send out more emails with when you have multiple domains. And this feels probably a little overwhelming right now. Like, oh gosh, I'm talking about multiple software platforms setting up new domains. Like, how do I even set this up? Like, this is what we do. We help companies build out these sales workflows to set up your account so that you know how to use it and use it correctly.

0:15:13 - (Alane): And our website is workdayninja.com dot. You can fill out one of the lead forms. You can contact us. I am very active on LinkedIn, so is Micah. So if that's where you like to do things, then please contact us there. And now that I'm on the subject of LinkedIn, I want to loop in one more piece of. This is the idea of multi channel outreach. We're talking about sending emails, but when you pair it with another channel like LinkedIn, your response rate increases. That's two different touch points that you have with that client now that you didn't have before.

0:15:49 - (Alane): And maybe they didn't pay attention to the email because they get so many emails and they just archived it. But then you get in front of them in LinkedIn and you sent them a connection request or a message. And now. Oh, okay, now I've seen you twice. Yes, I am actually interested. Okay, I'll accept. And now you have another channel to reach out to them.

0:16:07 - (Micah): Yeah, I think there's. We use that technique when we did the outreach around Boulder to meet with people for coffee. And I would say it's 50 50. 50% of the people responded in LinkedIn, 50% of the people responded in email. What that tells me is, had we not used that strategy, then we would have had 50% less people, give or take.

0:16:34 - (Alane): Yeah.

0:16:36 - (Micah): It would have been less, for sure.

0:16:38 - (Alane): Yeah. And things don't always have to be that you're trying to sell them on stuff. You know, this is the first step in making a connection with somebody, to build a relationship so that they know where to go when they're ready. And one of my favorite ways that I see work so well is inviting them to a webinar that you're hosting.

0:17:01 - (Micah): Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just anything that's valuable that you could provide to build that relationship. There's one other piece to this that I thought was really interesting when we did this campaign, Alane, and we see this with our other campaigns as well, is that the time it takes people to reply? Some people can reply right away. I'm still getting replies to, from about five to six months ago, saying, hey, sorry, missed your email, missed your LinkedIn, five to six months later.

0:17:31 - (Micah): And what that means is you can set these up. Things can, like, I think we forget or we get impatient. I know I do that if it doesn't happen right away, then it's not going to happen. But the reality is, if you have your team and this outbound happening, you can still be getting results five months after the campaign starts or even ends. And if you have multiple campaigns during those five months, you're building out a pipeline of leads that are going to come in for the next one to two years.

0:18:03 - (Alane): Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Like, we recently had a sale come in. That was so, that was in July. They've. Our first contact with them was in January, and they came, they received one of our automated outreaches. It was about click up Asana, and Monday they went to a free webinar that we did in January, and we were then connected with them, and then they became a client in July. So, you know this. If we hadn't set up that automated outreach, they would have. We would have never found the time to invite them to one of our webinars.

0:18:39 - (Alane): With these campaigns, you can have multiple also running at the same time. So we're getting, you know, it's feeling more overwhelming, but it's really nothing. And what I like doing is setting up an evergreen campaign. So if we're not going to a conference, if there's not a webinar coming up, I always have some type of outreach happening that I can turn on when nothing else is going on. And that way it always has something to warm people up to us. And it, again, doesn't have to just be cold sales. It can be warm relationships.

0:19:13 - (Alane): And that's what I like about the evergreen ones is like, hey, you know what? We don't have a lot that we want to sell on right now. Let's just make sure we're connecting with other people that are like minded, possibly interested in what we do, and let's just send them a note to connect and maybe that runs for just a week while we get another sales thing put together. These can be turned on and off, and I love doing that.

0:19:36 - (Micah): It's brilliant.

0:19:38 - (Alane): So if you like the idea of anything that we're talking about and you want to set up some sales automation, we have a crawl, walk run so that, you know, can, you can get your feet wet. You don't have to do this massive outreach or setup, and we can just crawl with it and you can start to see how it works, if it's going to work for you, which it absolutely should. It works for everybody if you put in just a little bit of upfront time.

0:20:03 - (Alane): So if you want to talk to us, reach out to us. Workdayninja.com dot I absolutely love this part of what we do. Thanks for listening to this episode of Automate your agency. We hope you're inspired to take your business to the next level. We have free content and tools for automating your business at our website, workdayninja.com.

0:20:23 - (Micah): And join us next week as we dive into more ways to automate and scale your business.

0:20:27 - (Alane): Bye for now.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Alane Boyd

Co-host
Head Shot

Micah Johnson

Co-host