Going Beyond Outreach Automation
Had a fantastic time speaking at this sold-out event on how B2B sales is being reshaped by AI. Here are my takeaways:
Current State:
- Outreach Automation: Most of the attention is going to pipeline-building through top of funnel automation. Contact databases, cold emails, drip campaigns (sequences) and LinkedIn outreach are all table stakes. Tools like Apollo.io and LinkedIn Sales Navigator are some of the most popular tools out there right now.
- Personalization: With outreach automation largely solved, the next wave is AI-driven personalization. Tools that research prospects use that research to tailor messaging. I don’t personally automate this task, but Clay seems to be one of the leaders in the space.
- Intent: Tools that measure intent try to get at the “when” in “right message, right person, right time.” I haven’t yet tested this enough to form an opinion, but to me this will be a tough problem to solve well. 6sense and ZoomInfo come up in many conversations I have when talking about intent signals.
What’s Working:
Automation: Outreach automation works really well. Both for email and LinkedIn, the tools have gotten quite sophisticated and do a great job at automating outbound campaigns.
What’s Broken:
Authenticity: Even if AI-driven personalization appears to be genuine, the fact that it is presented as the result of thoughtful research (and the recipient knows it) the trust that such effort was intended to establish is automatically destroyed. Samantha McKenna has a fantastic framework called “Show Me You Know Me” that I highly recommend you check out.
What’s Coming Next:
- Automated Cold Calling: Imagine visiting a website and receiving a call 5 minutes later trying to book you for a discovery meeting. You won’t know if you’re talking to a human or an AI. You may not even question it. But I suspect we’ll see a lot of uncanny valley moments before this tech is truly ready.
- Back to Basics: There’s an oversaturation of cold email outreach—personalized or not. People are getting email fatigue and at least myself, a craving for authentic human interaction. I foresee a return to quality over quality when it comes of B2B sales, especially when selling complex solutions.
- Compressing the Deal Cycle: A complex B2B deal can take 12-18 months. Deals stall from quarter to quarter. Sellers get ghosted for months. Some deals eventually close, and some end up lost. What if AI could help sellers understand WHY deals move along or stall? What if AI could recommend the next best action to take based on the buyer’s mindset?
