Big Deal Energy

Do you really need to do cold outreach?

• Laura Khalil

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In this episode of Big Deal Energy, business advisor Laura Khalil delves into the nuances of cold outreach in business growth. She explores the benefits, drawbacks, and when to use cold outreach versus relying on existing networks.

Products Discussed: Cold Outreach Cure


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Laura Khalil:

Hey friends, I want to welcome you to this episode of Big Deal Energy. I'm your business bestie, laura Kalil, and on today's episode, we are going to discuss if you need to do cold outreach to grow your business or can you just rely on the people you already know. As with any question, there is a lot of nuance to this, and so I want to go through the benefits of doing it, the drawbacks to doing it, when you need to use it, when you can, like, take your foot off the gas pedal, um, and basically what this all means. Because there are, uh, a number of business coaches, slash business advisors, whatever they want to call themselves who will tell you you don't do cold outreach to get big deals, you don't do cold outreach at all in my program or I, you don't have to do that. Okay, and, uh, I want to share my perspective on it.

Laura Khalil:

So first, let's start with what is cold outreach. Cold outreach is the process of reaching out to strangers, people you do not know, and trying to build a relationship with them. Warm outreach, which is the other thing, in contrast to cold outreach, is reaching out to people we already do know and trying to further our relationships with them. In both cases we are looking to generate sales, build referrals, build strategic partnerships, build promotional opportunities. So when do you need cold outreach? When do you not need cold outreach? Is it true that it won't get you big deals? Um, all that stuff, let's, let's dive in your network. Your existing network, especially if it is well honed and, meaning, nurtured already by you, is a great place to start with, uh, furthering your business. So if you have a keep in touch strategy, if you know how to engage your network and you've been doing that consistently over the course of months and years you may not need to do as much cold outreach. Okay, that's because you can rely more heavily on your network.

Laura Khalil:

There are rare instances where there are individuals whose business grows entirely through referral and entirely through word of mouth, and that's awesome. And here's what I'll tell you about those people. They come to me when their network has dried up and they come to me and they say, laura, I've gone through all my referrals, I'm not getting any more referrals. I keep going back to the well, and the well is dry, is dry, and so I don't know now how to go get clients. So sometimes, yeah, let's rely on our network first. It's a great place to start, but if you're doing zero cold outreach, zero making friends with new people, you are, frankly, limiting yourself.

Laura Khalil:

So, um, if you so, that's when I would say lean more heavy on warm outreach. If you've already got a great network, if you are moving into a new industry, um, or if you just have not nurtured your network or you don't have much of a network, you're going to have to rely on making new friends on the internet or in person. Those are just facts, y'all. I'm just spitting facts right now. Okay, um, this shouldn't come as a major shock to anyone, but that can seem really scary, and so we, we often want to try to find, like the quote, unquote, like work around for it. Right, it takes longer in general, but not always in general, it will take longer to close a deal through cold outreach, and the reason for that is because it takes longer to build trust, and people always buy from us according to the amount of trust we've earned with them, and the more trust we've earned with them, the more opportunity we have for them to be open to a larger deal with us.

Laura Khalil:

Now, this is sometimes the case, but not always. Again, there's no set in stones here. My business, my, my business, my consulting business, grew to multiple six figures, all based on cold outreach and all without waiting, you know, years for those deals to close. So, um, my first hundred thousand dollar contract came through cold outreach. I got that deal in six weeks. My second contract, um, I got in maybe three or four months, although they were already committed to working with me, they just had to go through all the red tape because it was such a large organization and it just took longer, all cold outreach.

Laura Khalil:

So I, when someone says to you you, you never have to do cold outreach, following my approach, they're basically telling you what you would love to hear. But the answer is that's only going to work if you have a well-honed network and you have a really solid keep in touch strategy. What I notice some of those coaches teaching uh is that they will instead try to cajole you into using um tools like lots of social media and uh and do things on LinkedIn which are called LinkedIn engagement pods. So they'll say, well, you don't have to do cold outreach, but instead you've got to post a lot on social media and you have to join a LinkedIn engagement pod. What is a LinkedIn engagement pod.

Laura Khalil:

So a LinkedIn engagement pod is where you and a group of people agree that whenever some an individual in your group, your pod posts something on LinkedIn, that you all in your pod will comment on it. And you can spot LinkedIn engagement pods from a mile away because they have a stream of comments and the comments are typically very pithy, not thought provoking and just sort of like five cent comments. Right, there's not like a lot there. And you'll notice. If you then go through someone's posts, you'll see the same people commenting all the time. That's a LinkedIn engagement pod. Why? Now you might be thinking, oh, but like, so what's the point of that? And that doesn't sound bad, like wouldn't more people see it? So the thought behind the LinkedIn engagement pod is that people in other folks network in the pod will see your, see it because they've commented on it, expanding your network, and then they'll like reach out to you and ask to work with you. So oh phew, we don't have to do cold outreach, thank God.

Laura Khalil:

Okay, now here's the problem with that. One hope is not a strategy. Hoping that somebody in somebody else's network who might be a potential client for you sees a comment runs to you know like message. You is like, seriously, is this like what we're actually relying on? And, by the way, I'm not going to throw anyone under the bus, but there is a very prominent business coach who teaches the shit and I'm like, give me a fucking break. The second thing that is a problem with these, aside from it, relying on hope as a strategy, and you don't know if your target market is in their audience, why would we rely on this? The second thing is that LinkedIn does not like these. So LinkedIn will actually pick up when someone is doing an engagement pod and reduce the reach of it. So what's the fucking point, you guys? What's the point? Okay? So I want to warn you against the LinkedIn engagement pods. Please, like whatever you're doing in life. Don't do a LinkedIn engagement pod. It's a bad news bears.

Laura Khalil:

Second thing is sometimes people will say well, you don't have to do cold outreach, just post a lot on social media. Who here wants to devote more time to posting on social media? I'm waiting Like anyone, anyone, anyone at all. Anyone want to live their life posting shit on social media 24, seven? I sure as shit don't. I don't have time for that. Also, the challenge with posting a lot on social media instead of having conversations with people is that we actually have no idea if we're hitting the mark. And so here's what happens you post a lot on social media. You're posting, posting, posting, posting. It looks like you're the next fucking Oprah and people come in and they say I see you everywhere. I mean, you just look like you're killing it. Business looks like it's taking off, but they're not buying. They're not buying. What you're doing is you're creating a ton of awareness through the posting on social media, but it is not leading to sales, or not leading to sales consistently. And the reason for that is that conversations lead to cash.

Laura Khalil:

You must talk to a human being to increase the likelihood of making a sale. You know, my mom said something to me, so, by the way, I just want to tell you all I'm not like a natural born saleswoman. My mother is my mom. Back in the day, when I was like an infant, she used to sell gold and, um, she was very good at it. She was, oh, she's always been a salesperson and I've always been like like I was like the super shy kid who, um, you know, like I would kind of like, let my mom do the talking Cause I was like, oh, my mom will make friends for me, like that's the kind of kid I was growing up. I was not a natural salesperson. I wasn't out there with the lemonade stand at four years old. Like, that was not who I was.

Laura Khalil:

And so, um, my mom, when I started to get into sales in my early twenties which, by the way, I got fired from like every sales job in my early twenties Cause I, like, was too scared to sell a damn thing so, um, my mom would try to give me a lot of advice. And the one piece of advice she gave me that really stuck and I want to offer this to you is, she said, laura, it takes nine no's to get to one yes. Nine no's to get to one yes. Nine no's to get to one yes. So she said, instead of looking for the yes, seek the no, because the more no's you collect, the closer you are to getting the yes. Now, that number nine to one, that ratio, that just depends on the industry you're in and the business you're in. So you want to. But that's a good rule of thumb to start with, aim to get nine no's. Aim to have nine conversations that end in a no, you might just be surprised how many sales you make as a result of doing that.

Laura Khalil:

So does any of this mean, in terms of cold outreach, that you need to be cold outreach, hustling like a mad woman? No, you don't need to be cold outreach, hustling like a mad woman, unless you are going into a new market and you are trying to make friends in that market, to a new market, and you were trying to make friends in that market. But let me ask you this question Does it hurt you to expand your network? Like when in the history of growing a business, has it hurt you to know more people and have a more expansive network? When? Tell me when? Okay, the answer is never. It can never hurt you to make new friends on the internet, and that's what I call cold outreach is making new friends on the internet or in person, but most of us are just living our virtual lives, so this cannot hurt you.

Laura Khalil:

To do it can only help you in the long run, and doing cold outreach today is something that your future self in six months or a year will thank you for. Will you get the instant hit of business? You might. You also might not. That's hard to know right, based on what you do. We can't like promise what's going to happen, but I can promise you that sitting back doing a LinkedIn engagement pod and hoping someone comes to you because they saw you know a LinkedIn post of you drinking a coffee in front of a brightly lit window, I can guarantee you that is a worse strategy. Okay, that is definitely a worse strategy. So we have to be proactive. We have to be reaching out, first and foremost, to our network, developing consistency in doing so, and, in addition to that, I do recommend, even if you have a well-heeled network, that you begin to dip your toe into making friends with strangers on the internet because you just simply do not know what's going to happen.

Laura Khalil:

There are two traits of the most successful people that I've seen, and this is very well documented. I don't even think this is just me. I think this is across the board. The first trait of highly successful people is they're consistent. They do things and they do them again and they do them again. They put in the reps. They are willing to do things and have like a shitty first draft. They're willing to do things and do it to like a B minus to give them. They don't have to be perfect y'all. Okay, they're willing to just like, have a B minus until they get better, until they improve over time. Okay, consistency is like compound interest it just grows over time.

Laura Khalil:

Consistency is like going to the gym and lifting the weights. When you go, when you first go and you do your reps at the gym, you're only going to be able to lift the lightest weights possible. If you haven't been there in a year, over time, you're going to earn the right to lift heavier and heavier weights and get more and more in shape. And that is the exact same thing that happens with business development. In the beginning, you're going to do business development. You're going to reach out to people you know and don't know, and it's going to be real rusty. It's going to be rough. Okay, it's going to be rough. Allow it to be rough. Have some compassion for yourself. It can be rough in the beginning, but you're going to keep putting in the reps. We ain't giving up, right. This is the number one thing I work with my clients on. Inside of my mastermind is working with them on how do we put in those reps, how do we implement the Elevate framework in your business so that you can put in the reps every day.

Laura Khalil:

So the first trait of highly successful people is they're consistent. The second trait of highly successful people is delayed gratification. Delayed gratification If you are searching for an instant result, if you need it right now, or else you will never appreciate how sowing the seeds today will reap the benefits and reap the rewards in the months and years down the road. Your future self will thank you for all of the rewards it has reaped because you put in the work today. We live in a society that is completely obsessed with getting it right now, and the truth is that there is no business on this planet that happens immediately. And if you can withstand the discomfort and the delayed gratification that you're dealing with today, but consistently put in the work to get to the point where you reap the rewards, they will pay you back in dividends.

Laura Khalil:

So a lot of people, when they get tripped up, are like I need to make this money now, I need to do this right now, and it's like hang on a second. What if we consistently put in the work to set you up for success in four months from now? What if we stop acting so thirsty, which is what we see? A lot of crummy cold outreach. Look like what if we stop acting so thirsty and trying to shove people into meetings and instead actually get to know another human being and develop a real relationship with another human being so that, when it is the right time for them to buy from us, we have already done the work of building the relationship? That is one of the key differences between the crummy cold outreach, or even crummy outreach even to warm leads, even to people we know, and good cold outreach. People who focus on the long-term, who focus on the relationship building rather than focusing on the sale today, people who focus on the long-term are going to be infinitely more successful in the long-term, infinitely more right, because they're not acting all thirsty, they're not acting all gross, they're not trying to press people into meetings, they're not trying to shove people into meetings.

Laura Khalil:

So I want you to think about that If you want to do cold outreach, if you're like you to think about that, if you want to do cold outreach, if you're like yeah, actually, laura, I have a great network. But you're right, I can't necessarily just keep going back to the well. Infinitely, the well might dry up. Today is the day to give yourself the gift of expanding your network and making new friends on the internet. If you need help doing that, we'll put in the show notes our program called Cold Outreach Cure. It's a training to actually teach you how to do non-spammy, non-sleazy cold outreach. It's fucking phenomenal. And if you're doing cold outreach, keep it up. You're going to get better over time, especially if you have something like the framework we teach to help you do it in non-spammy, sleazy, pushy ways. Um, I want to thank you all for listening to this episode, listening to my rant and, um, until next time, giddy up.