Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
Now, this week we're going to talk about cold emailing as a tactic to generate more leads for your startup or SaaS product.
Maybe you've tried sending cold emails and hardly had any responses, or maybe it's something that you've been thinking about doing.
Well.
In this episode, I have an expert on the subject who will explain why you should consider cold emailing as part of your marketing and sales tactics.
And we'll deep dive into a step by step process for finding leads, getting their contact information, writing emails that have been proven to get high response rates, and what you should do when people actually respond in order to convert them into customers.
Today's guest is the head of growth for Inspire Beats, a company that does fully managed sales and lead generation for startups and agencies.
One of the most common challenges I hear from SaaS entrepreneurs is that they're often struggling to generate more leads.
And many of you may have tried sending cold emails and maybe you wish you hadn't even wasted the time.
And in this episode, we're going to deep dive into lead gen and email outreach.
You're going to be hearing some interesting insights from my guest, including what he's learned from sending over a million cold emails, prospecting, and how to find the perfect B2B lead, what you should use instead of a sales script, why conferences are a hugely overlooked lead generation spot, and more.
So if you've been struggling to generate leads, this episode might just be what you've been hoping for.
So today I'd like to welcome Alex Berman.
Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex Berman (02:18.960)
Thanks for having me on, Omer.
Omer (02:20.560)
Now tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to sending a million cold emails.
Alex Berman (02:27.790)
Sure.
So Inspire Beats has been around for about a year and a half now.
It was started as a software, as a service product.
Basically we're a lead generation tool and it got into very deep detail in terms of like, you could find any lead you wanted basically anywhere online.
The problem we were running into though was it was too complex of a product and every time we would demo it for a client, they would basically just ask us to do it for them and send them the leads.
So about eight, nine months ago, we pivoted to a full services model, which is lead generation and outbound emailing.
Like you said, we Sent over a million emails this year.
As a team, we send about 150 cold emails a day just for our own company.
And I personally have generated over $20 million in leads this year.
Omer (03:15.450)
Wow.
Nice.
Nice chunk of change.
Alex Berman (03:19.050)
Yeah.
Omer (03:20.970)
Cool.
Okay, so let's just kind of dive into it and you.
Let's start by talking about cold emailing as a marketing tactic.
Why should companies consider using cold email?
Alex Berman (03:39.110)
So cold emailing, at any point in the business process, it has the highest ROI of any marketing channel.
There was some research done, and there's a chart of this somewhere.
But Basically the average ROI of cold emailing is $39.
And then the second highest was, I think, direct mail at like, $20.
So every $39 you invest in cold email, or every $1 you invest in cold email turns into $39 in return, which is higher than any other channel.
And that's why cold emailing is the best.
Like, if you're right now, if you're a startup founder and you're doing things like pay per Click ads or LinkedIn ads, and you're seeing your cost per user acquisition at like $400 a user, $500 a user, cold emailing, you can get them for just your time investment.
So $0 a user.
And that's why I really like it.
Omer (04:29.290)
You know, I mean, it sounds great, $39 ROI, awesome.
But I hear so often about people who've tried cold emailing and not had a lot of success, and it's just been one of those things where it's kind of like, contrary to sort of counter to what you hear these days about content marketing and sort of build, sort of, sort of building authority and trust with an audience and then kind of, you know, nurturing a lead and all of that stuff.
Whereas cold email is like, no, let's just get to it and get, get, get to that person.
So why do you think it's still so effective?
And what do you think maybe is the difference between a good cold email campaign versus a poor one?
Alex Berman (05:20.610)
Sure.
So just to hit your point really quick about content marketing, you can still do all that stuff if you read anything about content marketing, which most your audience probably has, you know, it takes three to six months for any sort of thing like that to ramp up versus cold emailing, which you can ramp up literally by sending, you know, 10 emails today.
So there are two things that make a difference when it comes to cold emailing that we've learned.
The first is quality of leads matters.
A whole bunch of.
So if you're Emailing people that don't want or aren't looking for a service similar to yours, your emails aren't going to be effective.
And that's the biggest things.
So for instance, if you're selling to companies that have a design team, make sure everyone you're emailing has a design team, right?
Make sure they're qualified.
If you're emailing to Companies with a WordPress plugin, do some research first and make sure they have a WordPress blog, et cetera, going down the line.
So quality of leads is super important, we found, and then that's the most important thing.
And then second most important is customizing the email.
So a lot of sales coaches and the big names in the sales industry are big fans of templates, which is writing an email that looks custom and sending it out to different user segments and all that.
What we found works a lot better and is a much better return on time is spending two to five minutes per sales email that you send out and customizing at least the first line and the last line of the email to make sure that they're directly on target with what your user is wanting to see rather than what your user group is wanting to see.
Omer (06:55.870)
Give me an example of how you would customize an email for somebody.
Alex Berman (07:00.990)
Yeah, so I have an email pulled up on my screen right now that I was using because we were pitching this Ruby on Rails list and selling to Rails development agencies.
And basically the email that I sent to this guy reads, subject line is built a thing that auto finds Rails projects.
What do you think, Max?
So starting with that subject line, it's got his first name in it, it says Rails projects right there.
Because his agency specializes in Rails and it has the normal pitch, the tool auto finds them.
So then I jump into the email and it's hey, Max, came across your site and love the focus on security.
So right away that first sentence talks about exactly his agency, right?
Came across it and the focus on security.
And the reason I brought that up was because on his site his headline says something like, you know, security is the most important thing.
So we put it into all of our apps.
So basically as soon as he hits that first line, he's going to be like, oh, this guy, you know, he did some research, he knows what he's talking about.
Then you can start doing a little bit, a few templates.
So I send the same pitch to everybody after that.
So it's, you know, we just created a tool that scrapes 100 plus private groups for anybody looking for Rails development projects find 60 to 70 each month with concrete budget timelines, et cetera, then sends them to you every Sunday.
So that's the same pitch that I sent to all these development agencies then.
Does that sound like something you'd be interested in?
If so, we could hop on the phone to chat, or you could just check it out here.
So there's a solid call to action at the end.
We'd love your thoughts.
Thanks, Alex.
And then the last part is a P.S.
interesting post on the last days of Pirate Bay.
So in order to write that, P.S.
i took the second minute, right?
The first minute was spent researching his site to come up with that first sentence.
The second minute of research on this email was going to his personal blog, browsing through Max's posts, and I found one on Pirate Bay that was interesting, took about another minute to find.
And then I customized that last email and he responded within like 45 seconds of this going out.
Yeah, actually maybe like five minutes, if we're being truthful here.
But it was super quick.
Omer (09:02.120)
45 seconds sounds better, man.
Alex Berman (09:04.280)
It does.
I should just say that every time I try to be truthful, if possible, but yeah.
This email, this general template, this framework has had about a 7 to 8% conversion rate.
And by conversion, I mean people reading this email, then going back and forth and ending up signing up for this, which is a $350 a month list.
Omer (09:26.080)
So talking about conversion rates, what is the kind of the range of good conversions from cold emailing that people could expect if they do things right?
Alex Berman (09:36.320)
Our clients typically get when we're sending the emails, about 2 to 3% meeting book rate, which is, you know, a client response to the email.
Maybe they go back and forth a few times, but at 2 to 3% of the emails we send out will end up with a meeting on the calendar.
And that's a good rule of thumb.
Templated emails, if you do, you know, just robotic templates, right.
Good rule of thumb is about 1% conversion rate.
So ours is about two to three times more effective.
And sometimes, like if you're just starting cold emails and you're paying a lot of attention, spending like 10, 15 minutes per email, you could see conversion rates as high as 10 to 15% or maybe even higher.
Omer (10:12.380)
And then when you contact these prospects, what, what's the offer that you're making them?
Does it vary depending on the product?
Are you trying to get them just to put their hand up and ask for more information?
Are you trying to get them to have a meeting?
What's what's the logical step that you're trying to get people to take.
And I guess it might be different for different products and markets, but are there some general rules around what, what's sort of best practice?
Alex Berman (10:40.740)
Sure.
So it's, it's different for products and markets.
For instance, if you have a free trial, usually you can get people to sign up for a free trial without ever having to get on the phone with them.
Just a few emails back and forth and you can get them signed up.
And if you get really good, you can sell products.
We've had luck selling products under $400 just using email alone without having to get on the phone.
But once the pricing starts getting up there, or maybe you're in an agency environment or you're selling services or consulting and you need to get on the phone in order to price things out, then phone is the best option.
So it really depends on what sort of business you're in.
Omer (11:17.090)
So I guess before you can send out an email, you've got to figure out how to find these qualified leads.
Alex Berman (11:23.410)
Yeah.
Omer (11:23.810)
And so you Talked about your SaaS product, which kind of helps with that.
But whether somebody's using your product or doing it in other ways, are there some general steps that people can take to find those qualified needs?
Alex Berman (11:35.810)
Yeah.
So the first thing you want to do is identify who your target prospect would be.
And a good way to do this is look at your past clients.
Or if you're still validating an MVP or you haven't launched a product yet, think about who your target clients would be.
And basically run through a quick framework in your mind.
Right.
How big are the companies that, that you're selling to right now?
What decision maker is, is the person, you know, like, what's the title of the person that eventually ended up buying from you?
What sort of revenue do they have?
How big is their team?
How old are the companies?
Basically, list out as many key factors as you can.
This works best if you have around five or six clients or more and your product's validated.
But if you're still in the MVP phase, it might be a little more assumptive.
But list out those sort of factors, and that's a good starting point.
So once you have those factors listed out, you can start searching around the web to find companies that fit those criteria.
Omer (12:40.580)
Why is it so important to get so many factors?
You mentioned a number of things, and as you were talking about them, I was wondering, well, how would I actually go and figure that out if I was trying to look for these People online.
Is it really?
I mean, tell me about it.
What's, what's kind of, okay, you've got this list, but what do you actually do with this list?
Alex Berman (13:03.940)
Yeah, so the more factors you have, the more high quality the leads are.
You want to lean heavily towards buying signals, which is something your client would do online, that's public, that would make them a lead to you.
I like job boards very well a lot because people will post their needs basically in a job board.
For instance, if you're selling, you know, let's say you're like invision and you sell to designers, you would browse agencies and look at job boards.
And if anyone's hiring for a bunch of designers, it means their design team's growing.
That's a buying signal that they might be able to use in vision.
Those sort of buying signals are what you want to see.
And that's why revenue is a good one.
Because revenue and team size are both good because they show that the client actually has budget for what you're doing and they also identify who the decision maker might be.
For instance, we found that in startups under 25 employees, it's usually the founder that makes every single decision, whether it seems like it or not.
Whereas once you get over 25 employees, it's usually directors, SVPs, C level people, that kind of thing.
So the more factors you can think of, the better.
Omer (14:13.490)
So where do you go to find these people online?
Alex Berman (14:19.250)
Yeah.
Okay, so you can use a few different tools.
For instance, let's say you find out or you think that all of your potential clients use WordPress on their site.
So there's a free tool on builtwith.com where you can basically click WordPress and it will just search the web and deliver you a bunch of leads.
Everybody that uses WordPress on their site.
So if you're selling any sort of like SaaS WordPress plugin, that's a good one for you.
Or let's say you're a hosting provider, you can search everyone that uses GoDaddy hosting and then maybe compare those rankings to their traffic rankings on Alexa and find sites that have too much traffic for GoDaddy really to manage.
So the way you prospect is going to be super custom for your company.
But a good framework to think about is what sort of red flags will start popping up that are semi public that I can jump on for my customers.
Omer (15:15.830)
Okay, so in sort of that B2B environment you could, I guess it wouldn't be too hard to start to get a list of potential companies.
That you want to target.
And then I guess you have two challenges that you've got to figure out.
One is how do you kind of prioritize that list?
So you're spending most of your efforts towards the ones that matter the most and maybe having the sort of disqualifiers that you talked about earlier so you're not wasting time emailing maybe low quality leads.
Alex Berman (15:55.780)
Right.
So you'd want to find a list of all the companies in your space.
So for instance, if you're selling something to Amazon sellers, a list of everyone on Amazon that's selling and then you can niche it down and be like everyone on Amazon that's selling that has more than 200 products in the store.
Or maybe you're targeting startups, everybody that's looking on the job boards of Angellist, then you niche it down, everyone that's looking for ux.
So you find the main channel and then you niche down based on the criteria that you're going after.
Yeah.
To help prioritize like you're talking about.
Omer (16:27.550)
Okay, but then the next challenge you've got is figuring out who exactly do I send that email to in the company, right?
Yeah.
And I guess the bigger the company gets, the harder it becomes to figure out who to contact.
I mean, heck, I used to work for Microsoft and even when I was there I didn't know who to send an email to internally.
Alex Berman (16:45.700)
Right.
Omer (16:47.500)
I mean, maybe that's kind of, maybe kind of one extreme.
But my point is, I think, you know, once you get past a certain size, it does become difficult if you're not contacting the founder or the CEO.
Alex Berman (16:59.180)
Yeah, it's around 250 to 500 heads when things start getting a little crazy when it comes to real enterprise sales.
And in that case, yeah, you're going to want to do deep research.
I recommend sending emails to one person and CCing another person on it.
You can, let's say it's Microsoft and you're emailing the customer experience team.
Email two or three people from the top leadership and just reference that you sent the same email to a couple people.
That way it's not weird as long as you're still customizing the PS and the intro line for each individual person.
But yeah, enterprise when we're, you know, because we do this for a few enterprise companies with, you know, 500 seats or whatever.
And what we normally have to do is email them like seven or eight, sometimes even nine times before they'll be, you know, sold enough to even respond to an email.
So enterprise is Way tougher than selling to SMBs or to startups.
Omer (17:53.480)
Okay, so yeah, let's brainstorm this a little bit because I was talking to somebody recently who has a SaaS product which is targeted towards CIOs Chief Information Officers or chief security officers in, in sort of medium sized enterprises.
And I guess the obvious thing to do is to go to somewhere like LinkedIn and use that as a way to start to build your list of potential prospects.
But what else could someone in that situation do?
Alex Berman (18:30.560)
So LinkedIn actually in every single industry is the way to go.
Even lawyers are on LinkedIn, people that are actors and entertainment are on LinkedIn.
That is a great place to start.
Sometimes people like restaurant owners, if you're selling to restaurant or doing mom and pop POS lead gen, that's way harder.
What we used to do in that case, or actually what we still do a lot of the time is cold.
Call the business and pretend like it's a research project and ask if the owner's in to try to get the owner's first and last name.
Then we can guess the email address the same way.
But if they're any sort of business that operates online and they're not an offline mom and pop store, you should be able to find a lot of info on LinkedIn.
At least the founder's contact info, if not all of the chief people.
If in the in the off chance that they don't use LinkedIn, most companies these days will at least have their leadership team on their website on the about page and you can go from that.
Omer (19:30.500)
So you talked about emails.
There used to be that tool.
I don't know.
Did LinkedIn acquire that the Reportive?
Alex Berman (19:37.540)
Yeah, yeah, it still works.
I still use Reportive all the time.
Omer (19:41.060)
Okay, cool.
In the startup world it seems to be a lot easier because it's usually just like first name at whatever.
Alex Berman (19:48.150)
Right.
Omer (19:48.710)
So especially when you're kind of emailing founders.
Alex Berman (19:52.310)
Rule of thumb, at least when I'm trying it, it's about 60 to 70% and like agencies and startup worlds like first name at so that's just.
I don't even really run any of these other tools that we're going to talk about in a second before I guess that and report of and see
Omer (20:05.750)
if it pops up the product that you guys have.
I mean I assume that every time you have a, a new client that you're helping to generate leads for, you're not kind of going out there and sitting and searching on LinkedIn every time.
Alex Berman (20:18.710)
So we have a proprietary tool I'm talking about, you know, how you do it if you were doing it yourself.
But yeah, we have a tool built that does it automatically and is able to ping servers and actually, like, cross reference with LinkedIn profiles to make sure we have the right people go across and find the right titles and all of that stuff.
But I'm talking about how you do it if you're doing it manually.
Omer (20:36.550)
Got it.
Okay.
All right, so we've got a short list of qualified leads with.
We think we've figured out the right email addresses or a high percentage of the people on the list with the right email address.
What's next?
How do we then start to write those emails and start sending them out?
Alex Berman (20:59.830)
Cool.
So I recommend sending emails in bulk using a tool.
You can get this for free.
It's called Yet Another Mail Merge, and it basically lives inside of your Google Sheets, which is like what they renamed Google Docs to.
It's the Excel version of Google Docs, and it lets you send personalized emails from Google Docs using, you know, templates, basically.
So download that plugin, and then you basically go into this Google Drive and you can customize the first line of the email, and you can customize the PS and the subject line all from there.
So basically what you do is you'll sit down and follow the same process, the same framework we Talked about about 15 minutes ago, spend one minute researching the company website to make sure they're a good fit, and then come up with a custom line like, came across your site and love your focus on security, or came across your agency, looked at your profile and really liked the work you did with Tyson Chicken, like some sort of personalized thing about their company.
Then second minute, go over to their social media account, look through their social media, their Twitter is usually a good one, and see if there's something interesting you can call out.
So, like, you know, heard you liked craft beer or, like, saw on Twitter you were interested in craft beer.
Drink anything good recently?
Or, you know, if you're a sports fan.
I'm not personally a sports fan, but, you know, let's say the Bruins won or something and they're Bruins fans, can be like, you know, great job with the Bruins game last night.
You know, some sort of personal thing to get them going.
And then basically once you have that written out, you just hit send with yet another mail merge and all the emails go out and you sit back, wait for some responses.
Omer (22:32.130)
And so that plugin you mentioned, yet Another Mail merge, what does that do?
That sends it out through your Gmail account?
Alex Berman (22:41.330)
Yeah, it sends it through Gmail or if you have Google apps for business, which a lot of startups do, you can just send right through there.
Otherwise.
There is other mail merge software for custom emails, but I'm not an expert on those.
Omer (22:54.060)
Yeah, I've seen some people who try to send it through try to make it look like a personal email, but it comes in through like Mandrel app or one of those email services and that's a big giveaway, right?
That.
Oh, okay, this wasn't as personal as it kind of suggests.
Alex Berman (23:12.140)
Well omer, it's not just a giveaway.
It's, you know, it's really bad for your domain because especially I know the biggest example of this is I used to use ToutApp and send through their email servers and Tout's at a point where if you send emails out through their mail servers, your domain will almost instantly get marked as spam.
So you have to.
And they even recommend on the site that you have to use your own Gmail servers to send it because that's such an issue.
So yes, I would recommend against sending out mail merges using Mailchimp or you know, ToutApp or even like Guessware.
Any sort of thing that sends through other people's mail servers is bad for lists that haven't opted in first.
Omer (23:50.850)
Yep, yep, that's good.
Alex Berman (23:52.210)
Yeah, if they opted in, you can use mailchimp or whatever, but you know, cold emails, it's not good for.
Omer (23:57.970)
Okay, so we've sent out these emails and I'm sitting here twiddling my fingers and thumbs.
How long do I wait before I do a follow up or what should I expect to happen next?
Alex Berman (24:12.240)
Sure.
So if you use the framework we talked about, you should start seeing some responses, especially if you're picking the leads correctly within like 20, 30 minutes.
But wait about two days.
And if there's nothing in two days, follow up with a quick like, you know, hey Max, know you're pretty busy.
Hope this didn't get buried, exclamation point.
You know, very simple email as a reply to the old email.
And if you want you can even check their social media again and like call out like, oh yeah, I saw on your blog, like great new blog post, something like that.
So that's after two days.
We also believe in five to seven touch points.
So if you're running this program yourself, you can have your SDRs, you can have your sales development reps go over to Twitter and favorite some of their tweets or Even follow them, go over to LinkedIn, view their profile, and then.
So if they still haven't responded after two days, wait another couple days.
So like, on day five, you go over and you connect with them on LinkedIn and then maybe favorite a few more of their tweets.
So basically, you want to get five to seven touch points.
And a touch point doesn't have to be another email that you're sending.
A touch point can be just anytime they see your face.
So if they're seeing you favoriting the tweets, if they're seeing you connect with them on LinkedIn, every single time that happens, it's a good reminder to them that, you know, there's sales processes happening.
Some guy's trying to get in contact with me, they'll be curious and they'll be like, who is this guy?
Search your name, and then, you know, hopefully respond to the email.
Omer (25:35.750)
Okay, so a touch point could be anything you met, you mentioned, Twitter, liking something on their Facebook page or commenting on their blog, or all of those things would be considered a touchpoint.
Alex Berman (25:47.270)
Yeah, anytime your name pops up in their email.
So, yeah, commenting on their blog, liking their post on Medium, basically, whatever social media tools you use, Harding them on Instagram, commenting on their periscope, whatever they use and you use showing up.
There is a touchpoint.
Omer (26:02.640)
Now, how long would you wait before you would kind of cross somebody off the list?
Alex Berman (26:09.520)
I don't like to ever cross people off the list.
Omer (26:13.120)
I spoke to Steli Efti, the founder and CEO of Close IO, some time back, and this wasn't for Legion, but when I email people, you know, I might email them a second time, and that's about it.
Right?
And Steli was like, no, no, no.
Like, you know, you just keep emailing them.
You know, you don't make it, like, annoying and kind of do it in a nice way and whatever.
But I mean, he was talking about, like, once he'd emailed somebody like, 17 times before they responded, and they were like, oh, yeah, sorry, I was busy.
And yeah, sure, let's do this kind of thing.
But, yeah, so I kind of get the thing about not taking people off
Alex Berman (26:43.890)
your list, especially for larger enterprise sales.
They might not have a need right now.
Like, I was selling $150,000 mobile apps, and I think the longest I've waited for a sale to turn into even like a prospect was seven months.
Emailing them once a month.
Omer (26:58.600)
Wow.
Alex Berman (26:59.040)
Like, different articles and things like that.
So, yeah, if.
If you can stay in there and you can keep emailing them, all the other salespeople will, you know, they'll be like you, they'll stop emailing after an email.
So when they're gone, you'll be there the whole time.
Omer (27:10.970)
Persistence.
I hear that a lot.
Persistence.
Okay, cool.
Let's talk a little bit about what you have learned about best practices around selling a SaaS product.
So kind of given the kind of the service that you guys provided in Spy Beats and what you've seen with other clients or potential clients, what are kind of some best practices around selling a SaaS production?
Alex Berman (27:37.140)
Sure.
And this is a good topic to cover because everything I just mentioned, the cold emailing, the lead gen and all that, if you work with us, you won't have to deal with any of that anyway.
So yeah, the SaaS process is what happens after that email goes out.
Right after the follow ups, they've responded, maybe they have some questions or whatever.
So there are a few things that happen once a client responds.
Either they're going to say yes, this sounds interesting.
I'm going to buy immediately and sign up for a free trial.
Which happens sometimes but rarely.
They're going to respond either with some questions or they're going to say no, not interested, take me off your list, jackass.
Which also happens from time to time.
So let's talk first about if they say yes.
If they say yes to you, what you normally want to do is respond to okay, that sounds great.
And then recommend a time that you can meet.
So like that sounds great.
Would love to do a call with you.
How is Tuesday at 3pm Recommend a time to them.
Otherwise what works for you or there are free tools you can use.
I'm a big fan of the tool.
Calendly C-A-L-E-N-L-Y.com I think that's a freemium tool that basically plugs right into your calendar and you can just send potential customers a link and they can just book directly with you.
And the goal of that is if they're not signing up for free trial.
Right.
And you need to sign them over the phone, you want to reduce the hassle of scheduling an email as much as possible.
So that's best case scenario, they respond yes, you book a call.
Otherwise they might have questions via email.
And this is when you just have to get good at practice.
So you'll start seeing the same questions over and over again.
For instance, when I was selling this Rails list that we were talking about before, one of the main questions that came up was what sort of Budgets are there with the projects on this list.
So that came up over and over again.
So I ended up with a really good response to it eventually, which was a detailed breakdown of what the budgets were in the project.
Another question that kept coming up was, can we see a demo of the list?
And I came up with a list demo and I had it ready to go.
So basically, if you're selling via email, you're going to start seeing the same questions over and over again.
So you can start prepping your sales team with stock answers to those questions, not scripts, but bullet points that'll lead them through the conversation, with the goal being either a close via email or getting them on your calendar for a call.
Omer (30:01.500)
And then what is the ultimate goal to get them onto the phone and try to close the sale there?
Alex Berman (30:09.740)
Usually, yeah, especially if you're.
If you have full time salespeople most of the time.
There's a saying actually at Yelp that no deal gets closed over email.
And I'm pretty much in that boat too.
Wilson, who's our founder, who I think you know, he is a huge proponent of just trying to sell over email.
But, you know, I'm not, I'm not that good.
I need to talk to him for like 10, 15 minutes first before they buy.
So I recommend, yeah, for, for me, getting on a call is better.
Some founders might have more luck just closing over email.
It all depends on their style.
Omer (30:41.750)
So we've walked through the process.
Is there anything else that we've kind of missed from this that is kind of worthwhile knowing?
Alex Berman (30:49.680)
Yeah.
So, like what to do once, once you have a call book, we can talk about that if you want.
Omer (30:53.840)
Sure.
Alex Berman (30:54.720)
Okay.
So once you have a call booked with a client, I'm not a big fan of using a sales script.
A lot of old school salespeople will say, like, write down every word, you know, and have this perfect sequence that leads the client from like interest to, you know, desire, and then they take action.
Aida, I think that was Alec Baldwin who gave that speech in some movie.
But what I like instead is a list of qualifying question instead.
So start off with something like, you know, first go into your pitch a little bit like, hey, you know, I'm Alex, I'm from Inspire Beats.
We do lead gen for SaaS and startup SaaS, startups and agencies, you know, something really simple.
Then they'll be like, oh, cool.
And they'll already be warmed up because you sent an email so they're not going to hang up on you immediately.
Then you jump into something like, have you ever used a lead generation service before?
You know, or have you ever used something like this before?
Have you ever used SEO before?
Have you ever used my type of product before in the past?
And what that'll do is it'll paint where they are in terms of knowledge about your area.
So let's say for instance, you're selling a calendar booking tool like Calendly.
Has your sales team ever used a calendar booking tool before?
And they'll be like, yeah, we used X AI, but it's pretty slow.
So sometimes they'll say that, but they'll be like.
Or they'll say, yes, we use something like X AI.
And you could ask another question in that.
The next question in the sequence after have you used something like this before?
Is if you stop, are you still using them?
And if you're not, why did you stop?
And they'll say, oh yeah, X AI works really well, but sometimes it was just too slow to respond.
And basically you can do the same thing that you were doing when answering clients via email, but just having a list of qualifying questions written out over the phone and start writing bullet points.
So for instance, for that hypothetical pushback could be like, oh yeah, XIA is really slow.
Well, calendly you can book immediately.
You just click on your calendar and it's done.
So for your SaaS app, you'll eventually start figuring out where to go in the process from there.
But it's good to start and think through what sort of stream the conversation might go in as it goes towards a close.
And then doing that rather than using a sales script.
Omer (33:10.100)
Got it.
At Inspire beats the software product that you, you guys are marketing is, is that kind of has that transformed into kind of an internal tool now that you don't offer that as a product in its own right anymore?
Alex Berman (33:23.220)
Yeah, it's an internal tool and I don't think we could even sell it at this point.
It's gotten way too complicated.
Like before it was too complicated when we couldn't sell it to people, but now it's just insanely intense.
We can basically like for instance on this podcast, I could go out and find everybody that the email address of everybody that listens to this podcast.
Or for like founderscard, we can go out and find all the members that are paying for FoundersCard or Dynamite Circle or everyone in YEC.
Or we can go out to Amazon and find all of the people that are Amazon FBA sellers.
Like we can get super granular with the type of leads that we're looking for.
Omer (33:58.770)
How could you find email addresses of listeners of the podcast?
Because most of the downloads sort of happen in itunes, and that information is.
So it's like a black box in there.
Alex Berman (34:12.990)
Yeah.
So we would scrape page by page.
Basically, we would start with the reviews so the, you know, the people that are screaming the most online.
And then normally what you can do is people use the same usernames for itunes a lot as they use in other places on the web.
So we're able to take that data and then cross reference it with other data online to come up with a profile of the user.
Then from that name and that email address, we're able to find what company they worked for, their title, and all the other phone number, all the other data we need.
Omer (34:41.560)
Definitely not something you want to try and do by hand.
Alex Berman (34:46.600)
That would take forever.
Yeah, that's why we're here.
That's what people call.
Omer (34:51.560)
So let's talk a little bit about Inspire Beats, then.
So I'm kind of looking at your site, and there are kind of like two kind of models that you have.
One says leads only, where there are packages that start from, I guess, 350 bucks a month and up.
And then the other option is leads with outreach, which starts at around $700 a month.
What's the difference between what does somebody get with leads only versus without reach?
Alex Berman (35:22.580)
So they're basically segmented that way because there's two different types of customer.
The first one is leads only.
You'd want that if you have a sales team already, and maybe you have an email process that works really well that way.
And all you'd need there is a list of names.
Right.
If you have a really good list of names, you already have the processes in place, and your sales team can take that and sell immediately.
That's why you'd want leads only.
If you want.
With outreach, you would get more value out of that.
If maybe you're a smaller founding team, maybe you're less than 20 employees, and you haven't really done outreach before.
Because what that is is us sending the cold emails on your behalf and either getting free trial signups or getting customers to book directly on the calendar of your salespeople.
Omer (36:09.510)
Got it.
So you would go in the outreach model.
You would go as far as replying to any questions that those people had.
Alex Berman (36:21.380)
So usually.
So sometimes, yes, it depends on the question if a customer is really thought out.
We just signed up a huge SaaS marketplace platform, and basically they had done a bunch of research beforehand, so they were able to send us their ideal client profile questions that might be asked as well as bullet points for the answers.
So if you have that kind of documentation, then, yeah, send that over and we're able to answer questions.
Otherwise, if there's a detailed question, we'll just pass it right along to the sales team.
Omer (36:53.260)
And then with the outreach model, your deliverable there is getting somebody to schedule.
Is that the, the ultimate goal there or what does it mean when you generate a lead with outreach?
Alex Berman (37:07.430)
So the leads are the number of people we reach out to.
The end goal is either a free trial sign up if you have one, or a calendar invite where the person actually shows up.
Omer (37:20.310)
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, because I guess you've got no way of knowing how many of those 200 leads are going to convert.
Alex Berman (37:28.630)
Yeah, because it depends on a lot of factors.
Like some founders are so good that they're able to close like 80% of the people they talk to.
In that case, they're going to see a huge ROI from us.
But for instance, in agency world, 20% is the normal close rate, even when people are super warm.
So yeah, it really depends on whatever your close rate's been in the past.
You can expect a similar rate or even higher from these.
Omer (37:53.820)
Okay, but that lead, would that just be an email address on your list or would that be somebody who's kind of responded and put their hand up to say, yeah, I'm interested in some way or form.
Alex Berman (38:04.210)
So by the time they get to your calendar, they're qualified and they're interested.
So it's name, email, phone number, any other data you need.
So let's say you need to target people by Amazon rank, it might have their Amazon, like how many sales they have per month or whatever.
As much as we can infer on their site traffic or revenue from AdSense, we can infer also.
So whatever sort of custom targeting you want on there also.
And then title or LinkedIn profile, basically it's all custom and you can order whatever you want.
Omer (38:36.720)
You guys have got this down to a fine art.
Alex Berman (38:40.320)
A million emails, Omer.
Omer (38:41.840)
A million emails.
Hey, one of the things we kind of didn't touch on was conferences and why you think that they're kind of a overlooked lead generation opportunity.
Alex Berman (38:59.270)
Yeah.
So most people, when they go to conferences, they approach it the wrong way, which is, let's say you're in email marketing.
One conference you might go to is Conversion Con.
Right.
Where it's all a bunch of email marketers hanging out trying to sell each other email marketing services.
Which, you know, I Never found too much value in that.
I was just at Sales Stack, which was a bunch of lead generation companies talking to each other, trying to sell each other lead gen, which isn't that valuable.
What we found more valuable is I was just in Seattle for Seattle Interactive and it was all social media companies and digital agencies, both two target markets that would buy our service.
So when you go and approach a conference, make sure you go where your target market is and avoid any sort of conferences that have just people in your industry.
And the good thing about doing that is you don't actually even have to go to the talks or meet random people.
All you basically have to do is go to the booths where the sponsors are and talk to those people.
Because normally at the booths it's usually the founder or, you know, the head of product, the head of sales, somebody with buying power, and they're forced to talk to you because they're there to pitch their product.
So what I did at Seattle Interactive was go from booth to booth.
I think there were about 15 or 16 sponsors and we ended up with eight leads from that.
So 50% of those people that sponsored ended up being interested in our service.
And that's why I think it's really overlooked.
Omer (40:20.620)
Yeah, it's kind of one of those things.
You're right.
It's kind of figuring out the right conference where your target customers are going to be rather than it's like, hey, what do you do?
I sell CRM.
What do you do?
I sell CRM.
Great.
It's like, maybe we can trade.
Cool.
Well, first of all, thank you for all this.
This has been really valuable information and I'm kind of a lot more educated about cold emailing than I ever was before.
And I think I also kind of quickly reached the conclusion that it wasn't something I'd ever try to do myself.
Alex Berman (40:57.420)
That's good to say from a guy who said Steli on the podcast.
I'm going to quote you in a testimonial now.
Omer (41:04.180)
If folks want to find out more about Inspire Beats, they can go to inspirebeats.com and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Alex Berman (41:15.140)
The best way is so you can contact the company through the contact form on the site or I'm on Twitter.
Actually, the easiest way is probably Alexberman Co. That just goes right to my LinkedIn profile.
You can message me there.
If you want to talk to someone who knows cold email way better than me, just send a contact through the Inspire Beats site, and we'll route you to, you know, somebody who's.
Who's.
Who's focusing on your type of business.
We like to send, you know, the type of leads to the right sales development rep that specializes in what you do.
Omer (41:46.190)
Alex, thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
And I really appreciate you sharing your experience and expertise with our audience.
It's been enlightening for me.
Alex Berman (42:00.520)
Yeah.
Thanks for having me on.
Omer (42:01.720)
Yeah, sure.
It's been a pleasure.
All the best.
Take care.
Alex Berman (42:04.200)
You too.
