AI Outreach Doesn’t Work – Effective Prospecting in an AI Slop Filled World

AI Outreach Doesn’t Work – Effective Prospecting in an AI Slop Filled World

Gary hosts a livestream on why AI-driven outreach and “AI personalization” no longer stands out, often reads oddly, and can become a crutch that masks weak offers. He argues tools aren’t people, cites examples of AI mishaps, and shares results where simple templates outperformed custom and AI-personalized messaging, including a templated auto-reply email raising reply rates from 3% to 42% and a comparison of 9,000 AI-personalized cold emails yielding three meetings versus 55 templated LinkedIn messages yielding four meetings. He recommends improving writing and offers (with book suggestions), heavily editing any AI-assisted drafts, and differentiating with human tactics like thank-you cards, mailed follow-ups with small gifts, and coffee mug mailers. He outlines an outreach structure of intro, relevance, a short sequence, and a clear next-step offer, then invites viewers to schedule help via The Appointment Lab.

Discover:

00:00 Welcome And Setup

02:38 Housekeeping And Replay

03:50 Agenda Overview

04:53 Meet The Host

06:04 AI Hype And Mishaps

07:55 Why AI Personalization Fails

10:32 Templates Beat Custom

13:14 Proof With Real Numbers

14:23 Back To Human Fundamentals

14:59 Write Better Outreach

16:59 Craft A Clear Offer

19:18 Stronger Offers Caution

20:43 Using AI Without Sounding Fake

22:55 Stand Out With Mail

23:47 Thank You Cards That Convert

25:35 Laser Pointer Reengagement

27:56 Coffee Mug Meeting Invite

29:56 Human Outreach Sequence

32:42 Follow Up Three Times

34:33 Make A Clear Offer

35:35 Get Help And Wrap Up

Transcript:

[00:00:02] All right. Welcome everybody to today’s live stream. this is the, session, the Why AI outreach fails and what to do instead. so if you are hoping for the underwater basket weaving, stream, that’s actually two doors down the hall to the left. So, but, Appreciate you having you guys all here. we’ll get started here probably in just a minute or so.

I just wanna wait for notifications to go out and make sure that everything’s actually running properly. ’cause you know, techno technology is like that someday. So, we’ll just give everything a minute to get, get going. in the meantime, where’s, where’s everybody, calling in from today? I know it is a, it is a kind of a cloudy day here in the Detroit metro area.

Although we’ve had some pretty nice weather, so, definitely, can’t complain about any of that. So, how about you, how are, how was, how was the weather in your neck of the woods today?

And I’m just gonna take a quick peek here and make sure the stream is actually running. Oh, there we go. There. It’s running. You know, we’re, we’re all good. So. I can see people are just starting to hop on. So, welcome everyone. again, welcome to to today’s session, why AI Outreach fails and what to do instead.

we’re gonna get started here. I’m give it 30 seconds. 30 seconds. I can see people coming in the screen now, so I think, I think everything is running. so I see, yeah. From, from Carrie Lynn up in Invoca, Michigan. Cloudy, but warm. Though, I think for a lot of people, warm has been warm. No, people want it to be less warm.

I think in the upper Midwest here, we’ve actually been been somewhat lucky. Marilyn in Chicago, dreary and raining. Suzanne, nice to have you here. Appreciate you having on. Alex in, upstate New York. Great to have you here. And, John sunny Oregon. John’s got the pick weather of the day. Alright, so let’s get going here, because I know your time is valuable and I don’t, you didn’t come here to chat with me about the weather, as much fun as that may be.

let’s, let’s talk about why you’re actually here, which is AI outreach. How, why, why it isn’t working, living up to. Expectations for people and some things you can actually do instead that you know, are, are more human based and more fun and that people are going 

[00:02:37] to like better. So, quick few housekeeping items here that, on any of these live streams, there is a time delay of about 20 to 30 seconds from when I’m saying something here on my end too, when it comes through on your speakers.

So what that means. For most, for most things, it means absolutely nothing, but it means that sometimes a question will get posted in the chat. And, I won’t be able to respond to it in real time. It might take me 30 to 60 seconds to see it. I know, people do ask if there’s going to be a replay or if this is being recorded.

And the answer to the both is, yes, it is. and it will be available right on the same. Be you came here on. So if you came out here via LinkedIn, just click back on that LinkedIn link and as soon as we’re done here, it usually processes lately in about three, three less than three minutes. Though I’ve seen it take up to 24 hours.

So we’ll, we’ll call it one to 24 hours to be safe, but in most cases, if you push the refresh button as soon as I end it, it will go right back to the beginning. If you’d like to be notified of future events, go to Pipelineology dot com slash events. So that’s kind of the introductory stuff I’ve got for you 

[00:03:49] today.

Let’s talk about the agenda today, and that is we’re talking about the AI slap cannons and how people just can’t, can’t wait to, you know, fire more, more ai slap at all of us. we’re gonna talk about templates. I’m gonna defend the use of templates. I’m gonna show you some data showing where they can work better.

we’re gonna talk about ways you can actually show up differently versus being the thousandth person to send another cold email. To someone this month, and then we’re gonna open it up to q and a. I will try and take questions as we go along, for each section as well. But, if we don’t get to ’em right during, during that session, or if it makes more sense to answer it at the end, we’ll, we’ll come back and answer things at the end.

So feel free to answer or ask questions at any time during today’s session. and we’ll try and get to ’em as, as they come in. So great to have you here. I see a lot more people now, coming in. got more, let’s see, we got Los Angeles reporting here, Portland, Oregon. great. So. Let’s, let’s 

[00:04:52] jump into it.

If this is your first time here. My name is Gary Ruplinger. I am the founder of Pipelineology and I’m host of the Pipelineology podcast. If you know any good guests, would, would love to get on and talk about, you know, cool different sales and marketing strategies that have been effective for you, effective for you, however you wanna talk about it.

I’d love to have you on the show. got 25 years of marketing experience. Gosh, that’s. It feels like a long time saying that at this point, ran, I ran call centers during my corporate days, so we’d take, you know, all the incoming leads and follow up and phone calls and, this was before text messaging was super popular in any of that.

But, but. did that in my corporate life. these days now it’s more of a solution for, get helping clients get meetings. mostly consultants, small manufacturing firms, software companies, things like that. So, and, as always, I am actively seeking New England IPA beer style recommendations.

So let’s jump into it. So move my head around here a little bit. There we go. So it seems 

[00:06:03] like. Every, every year it’s the same thing, right? I spent last, last year was the slowest, beginning to a year in 2025 that we’ve ever had in the business because everybody saw AI is going to replace you. AI is going to replace you.

And everybody’s kind of took a pause until they realized about halfway through the year that AI was not up to up to the task for most things. And, 2026 people are saying the same thing. AI is gonna replace you, but now it’s 2027. 2027. Who knows, right? The tools have gotten much better, but nonetheless, they are still tools.

They are not, they are not people, right? And we keep seeing lots and lots of reports of all the weird stuff that it does or say, gosh, you just, it’s, it’s hard to, hard to rely on it. Or you get replies like, this, got this, got this, this one in it. You get this fairly regularly, but. This one caught my eye ’cause I was getting prepped for this event and somebody said, you know, I’m currently in the building stage, not ready for more leads.

But my AI team can probably, and and I laugh because what happens when you let your AI team handle it? Well, there’s this story from last, last year from the Wall Street Journal where, AI ran their vending machines and then immediately proceeded to lose hundreds of dollars. right. It was, you know, some bought somebody a PlayStation, things like that.

Recent one. Right. Muse Meta’s, brand new AI bot. This one came. This is from this week. you know, a buyer showed up at a seller’s house because music accepted some low ball offer on Facebook marketplace, and SA saved the address without even telling the person, se selling the thing. Right? so, AI is, I would, I would be cautious saying that your AI team is ready to handle it.

[00:07:53] I think, right. One of the big things, especially like in the world of outreach, the, the types of things I do, is AI personalization, right? if you’re doing is how it can look at somebody’s, you know, a bi bio on their website or you know, their link LinkedIn profile, things like that, and personalize the message just to them and.

This was, this was a thing I want to say, 2022. I did a, I did a podcast interview with, with, with a gentleman who, that was, that, that was how their, how all their outreach ran. And they had a whole team of people in the Philippines just typing these things up manually. and back then it was, it was huge because it was, it was really different and it really helped you stand out compared to every other message that you were getting.

These days now. Now it’s a crutch. Every day I get 30 AI personalized messages that they’re all just sitting in my spam folder. They just. They just don’t move the needle anymore and they, they really all start to sound the same. Right? And this is, this is what they start to all look like is, you know, they, when you start skimming ’em, you know, they look good enough and then, and then you start reading them.

Or you start reading a bunch in a row and you say it, it just, it just doesn’t quite sound right. That just doesn’t make sense. It’ll. Say, Hey, you know, I thought I’d email you this morning because it’s 80 degrees in Hawaii. This, you know, it was 80 degrees in Hawaii yesterday. It’s like, okay, that, that may be true, but what does that have to do with this?

And I realize that that seems like a, a ridiculous example. But when you start reading some of these sentences, the way it structures them, that, that’s literally the types of things it’s saying, giving you one totally irrelevant piece of information. Tied together with the word because Thank you Robert Sini, for teaching the ai that because is a, a powerful word, and that you can sometimes get away saying nonsense after it.

and I know sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on, but you kind of know it when you read it, right. It just, it just doesn’t sound right. so, but once you’ve seen it also, it just, it just isn’t unique anymore. People use the same, the same, the same tactic, the same joke, everything like that. It’s, it’s predictable.

It’s no longer interesting. And now you’ve used, you’ve used personalization as a crutch that is doing the opposite of what you hoped it would be to, to make up for a 

[00:10:31] bad offer. So here’s, here’s, here’s my thought on the, on the whole thing is. Just use a template. but here, let, let me give you an example.

I posted this on, on Facebook, so if you can’t, or Facebook, I posted this on LinkedIn, about three weeks ago. So if you, if you wanna, if it’s a little small and it’s tough to read, especially if you’re on like a, a phone today or something, I know you won’t be able to read some of the things on the, on the presentation.

So about this one, this is on my LinkedIn profile. go ahead and just find this post. But, Post an example of an email that got a 42% reply rate and you say, oh, that must have been like some amazing thing. You must had a great, you know, team, like really, really customizing these responses. And this is for a car dealership.

And this was a templated after hours auto reply, right? They, they knew it wasn’t auto reply when they got it because the thing, it just said, Hey, this is this message. Hey, we’re closed here. Here’s the message. I got 42% of people to respond to it, which, the previous message got a 3% rep reply. So this is, that’s what it was replacing.

and, and we ran this same type of experiment throughout all of the, all of the responses. So, you know, first message that goes out is having a prefilled message ready to go because. Custom written messages can be great, but all of a sudden you get busy. And I was just having this conversation with a, with a, a client, earlier this morning we were reviewing some of the results from, from his campaign.

And we were talking about, you know, sometimes, you know you are dialed in, you nailed it and that message is, is spot on. Perfect. There was 10 out of, 10 out of 10 no notes type of message. And then sometimes it’s kind of mid, right? It’s, yeah. Well it was okay, but. Nobody’s, nobody was super excited about, about it.

You’re maybe you’re a little tired, or you’re a little distracted, you know, you had to get ’em done. So you sent those messages out and then some days you’re tired. Right? You, you know, it’s, it was a, it was, you know, it was a long day and you’re. As quickly as we can to get ’em done. And they are terrible. templates don’t have that problem.

Templates are the same. So you pick a day when you’re, when you’re good, you nailed it. The energy was right and you sent, just keep sending those out. And we’ve seen this time after time is that those will outperform custom written messages. Those will outperform AI personalized 

[00:13:11] messages. Lemme give you some numbers ’cause I don’t expect you to take my word for it.

I’m some random guy on the internet, right? So talking to different, different client now, different on Monday and he’s been running some experiments. so big, he’s a big AI guy, loves them. But you know, he hired us to help with his LinkedIn site. So he had sent out 9,000 in the past month, 9,000 personalized ai, personalized cold emails.

got three meetings from it. Same for the same type of offer, same target we had sent out for that particular 1 55 LinkedIn messages. I know not very many, and they were all templates. They weren’t, they weren’t AI personalized in any way, shape, or form. Straight up template. Everybody got the same one with their name on it.

Four meetings. so those, some, and, and I mean, again, this isn’t necessarily a peer, apples to oranges. LinkedIn’s a very different space from, from, from email, right. The trust factor is much higher on LinkedIn. But, this is, these are some of the things I I’m seeing, is that 

[00:14:22] right? Ev Everybody’s like ai, ai, ai just over and over again.

And they’re kind of missing the fundamentals. So today I wanna talk about some of the fundamentals that, that we can use to build better offers, better messages that are going to work. and then, and then if you wanna add some AI on top of it, cool. Bob’s your uncle, you do what you want. But today, from here on out, we’re gonna focus on the things that are really human based that you can do.

And, you can decide how you wanna take that and go from there. 

[00:14:57] So. First things first is writing Right is right. I’ve got a a notepad here sitting on my desk for, for notes and things I want to chat about today, actually, just get the pen out, jot, jot things down so I remember them better. but that, I mean, really if you want to get better at, at writing, whether it’s writing emails or writing out outreach or just writing anything, books on writing can be pretty helpful.

Right? And there’s. There’s plenty of them out there. Here’s three on the screen from, Stephen King. Chuck Nik. I can’t ever say his name right, so assume that that’s not the way you say his name. but, you know, one’s called considered this, and then there’s one called Writing Tools by, Roy Peter Clark.

So for, for less than $20, you can get physical copies. You can literally have all of those sitting on your desk in less than a week. I used copies on eBay or wherever or Amazon or whatever. And you can literally have them all with some, some great wisdom on how to actually write. Of course, the thing is, then you actually have to start writing things, writing things down, right?

Keyboard, typewriter, what? Whatever you’re into. I, I’m more of a write things down by hand ’cause I remember them better. but, but that’s just me. But. I know, I know. We’ve kind of, we’ve kind of gone from AI can do this all to now we’re, we’re back to, it feels like we’re going back to the stone age, right?

Is go down, write things down and figure it out. But what I find is that the more I do this with, with, with client work, when we’re putting together campaigns, the more pages of notes that I’ve got jotted down, the better, the better the whole thing will perform. It’s ’cause it’s, it’s been thought about more.

It’s, you’ve, you’ve carefully considered it. It it is, it is a slower process by design, but it gets, but it gets better 

[00:16:57] results. Next, let’s talk about the offer. Same, same type of idea here, right? Is okay if we figure if we’re, we’re gonna write things down is what, what, what should that offer be? so two, two more book recommendations.

So now we’re, now we’re probably up to, if you want $30 for, for used books, but, one called StoryBrand 2.0, and then one called Irresistible Offer. But really two, two kind of key insights here is that one is you want clarity in the message. Something that, you know, is, is is clear people understand, like melt in your mouth, not in your hand.

You, I don’t have to tell you what company that is, but also you, you understand what, what that, right? If I’m showing you a picture of candy, it’s like, oh, if, if you’ve ever eaten a chocolate bar and you’ve gotten your fingers, were all brown because you’ve got chocolate on it. Now you’ve, you’ve experienced that.

And m and m comes along and says, here, they’re candy coated. I was watching a, a, a history, video on, on M and MSS actually. And, back in the day, this was m and ms came out before refrigeration was common. so this was actually a really big deal back then because back then a candy store. Might have chocolate in the summer that just all melts.

And the m and ms did not ’cause they had the little candy shell on ’em. So, that’s, that’s where a lot of that comes from is well before we all had refrigerators and air conditioning and all that. but some other examples, right? 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. Try five frames for free at home.

Try five frames at home for free. You’re like me and you wear glasses. You probably know that one as Warby Parker. but right. You, you, you get it. You, you’re, you’re, you’re shopping. It’s like, oh, that would be nice. Especially like, how do you sell glasses to people online? Warby Parker figured out, well do that.

Or. Put stores in the mall, which was, you know, once they had a lot more resources, they, they did that too. ’cause, but one thing, one word of caution here, and I’m, I’m gonna put the, the classic one down here under. Caution. Be careful. is that you don’t, I know people, right? Say, make your offer 

[00:19:17] stronger.

Make your offer stronger. Well, Domino’s did that fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less it free. And they got, that caused a lot of problems, right? Got sued, lost money. Almost, almost took, took down the company. Even though a lot, a lot of people like to look at that one as being like, that’s the one of the best offers ever created.

sure. It, it was, it was in fact a great offer. It’s a little bit too good ’cause they couldn’t deliver on it, so. That’s my word of caution is an offer that you picture, an offer you can actually do. Make it strong as good as you can, but don’t, don’t go crazy. I’ve seen Right. You’ll, you’ll see people like that, especially like in the outreach world of, you know, get your, your first clients free or, or, or you don’t pay us and things like that.

And ultimately, usually those are new upstart businesses. That, just, are, are trying to get a foothold and really it’s that that offer will get them clients and also put them right back out of business. ’cause they can’t, it, it’s really tough to deliver on it. just, just as a, an aside, anybody remember that Netflix used to offer one month free trials?

Not two weeks, not seven days. They don’t offer anything anymore. One month free trials, right. But obviously, again, probably wasn’t sustainable and you know, now they’re so big they don’t need 

[00:20:42] it anymore. But just, just as an aside, so if you must use ai, edit this, not out of it, quote, quote from I, and I feel like I’m talking about.

All my clients this session, talked to to a gentleman who just got started with him last week, and, he had sent over some revisions to what we had done, and that was a direct quote from him when, we talked about it. He is like, I used Chap GPT to do some of the work, but then I added Thenot out of it.

Kim kind of taking the same process where we talked about it, where it’s actually okay. Oh, that’s an interesting idea. Let me write that down. Then actually write it down and then rewrite it from there. But it can give you some good ideas, right? You’re, I, I’m not an AI hater. I, I use it. We’ve got lots of, you know, tools where it’s part of the process.

It’s just, I don’t use its output, but it can explore a whole lot of ideas. You can say, oh, there’s, I’ve got, you know, 10 ideas here. Give me, give me 10 versions of, of different examples here. and boom, it’ll, it’ll spit ’em out in, in a minute or two that you might have taken hours to kind of go through.

But here’s the big thing, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna keep it, I’m gonna keep saying it. It’s just don’t use the output directly because it’s usually, ’cause again, it looks good at first glance and you say, no, no, no, it doesn’t, it doesn’t sound right. I don’t like that word. That sentence doesn’t make sense there.

Okay, so you jot down some notes and, but, but it gave you some ideas and some ways to go. Every once in a while I’ll come up with a, an entire sentence that is, is brilliant and you’ll like it. But for the most part it’s more of like little chunks and little ideas, spread throughout. but like I said, edit things heavily if you’re going to to use it.

So let’s shift gears here. Carrie, do I have any, questions here that we need to cover here? I think everybody. Okay. So we’ll, we’ll keep going. Again, if you have any questions as we go along, please let me know and, post, post ’em in the chat here. and we’ll get some of this, spam stuff up out of the, out of the chat 

[00:22:54] here in a little bit.

But show up differently right now. These days. Anyone can show up in your inbox, slide ’em to your dms from, from anywhere. Almost nobody is showing up in your mailbox. This is a picture, this is an old picture of my mailbox ’cause it looks the same every single day, but this is my, my mailbox at the office that is empty.

Again, like the only thing I got was, was something, I’ll show you this example in just a second, but this orange envelope. That’s the only thing I’ve gotten today or this whole week. ’cause it’s a, a return to sender ’cause we got the address wrong, which happens once in a while. But, nobody’s showing up in your mailbox.

So what are, what are some ways you can use it that, that aren’t gonna be terribly, you know, expensive or anything like that? I give you a few ideas that you can 

[00:23:46] use. So the thank you card, this is, this is probably one of those like super underrated things that anybody can do. Right. Go, go to go to your local dollar store if you want.

I usually get mine from, I think Amazon, where I end up getting these, these orange ones or these blue ones. From that, they kind of have like a little bit of a gold, gold embossing on ’em, however you want to do it. But after meetings, I try to make sure I send out a thank you card to the person that I talk to, because I go from being, just a guy on the other side of a screen to.

Somebody who’s actually showed up in a different place in their mailbox. it doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to, to go through, you know, oh, you know, it was, you know, so remarkable meeting. You don’t have to glaze them. Just thank them for their time. ’cause you know it’s valuable. and you, you look forward to chatting with them again soon.

Whatever, however you left things off, mail it to ’em. And you know what, people will remember that. Here’s the important thing is people, those people are more likely to reply to your emails or reply to your direct messages, or meet with you again and ultimately become clients. right. It’s not gonna do all the work for you, but it really helps you show up differently.

So, especially if you’re in an area where, right. Lots of competition, things like that, in my world. Who everybody and their brother does outreach, right? I’m not, I’m not a unique and beautiful snowflake. I’m, I’m, I’m one of many, many people who do that type of work. I’m probably the only one who regularly sends out thank you cards though, or one of very few.

So that’s, you know, one of those little areas you can differentiate yourself. and it’s really easy to 

[00:25:31] do.

Next one, the laser pointer. I love this one because it’s, it, it, it has such a high ROI and you don’t have to send out very many to do it. So I like to do this one for people that I have met with, but the deal never actually closed. so, you can see kind of in the picture there, it’s just a little laser pointer and it was on my desk here about, half hour ago, but, oh, there, it’s so, I, again, it’s nothing fancy. This is like a, a super cheap, little, little laser pointer, right? Just a little, thing that you can see. But, all I’m trying to do is, you know, just get back in front of them with something that’s a little bit different and a little bit unique. you know, it’s just a one page letter and then I print off the email follow ups that I’ve sent them, and, and see if they’re interested in chatting again.

now, and some people get it, they love it, they reply back right away, and if they don’t reply back right away, we give them a phone call. again, it’s, it’s not hard, but it’s just a different way of showing up a little bit differently to get people back. Back in the mix that again, it’s so easy to ignore a follow up email or a follow up message online.

Right? Right. You, if you got, no right, if the notifications would just be nonstop if your inbox that you’ve got mail, right? You, you, you would, you’d never get anything done because it would just be nonstop. This is a way that you’re gonna, it’s gonna get delivered. It’s gonna show up and, And, and you, you’ve shown up again completely differently from anybody else.

They probably have talked to, you know, in the past six months, maybe in the past year. So it’s good. It works well for, for small list. You don’t want to try and send out hundreds of these ’cause it can be a logistical nightmare. Yeah. Right. But it, you know, get help. Yep. You’re right Suzanne. It’s a, that’s almost exactly right, about $5 and 64 cents to mail that worth every penny.

Because, because right, because it’s actually gonna get opened and looked at. That’s the big thing. Right? It’s ’cause, ’cause otherwise, who knows, maybe your emails ended up in spam. You don’t know. maybe that’s why they’re ignoring you. But, you know, you can be pretty sure that they, they got that. that one, another 

[00:27:55] one.

I like this one here. This is, this is my coffee mug mailer. this one I like for, for kind of high value prospect that you just, you just haven’t been able to get a meeting with. so, this is kind of an old version of it where it’s a just a coffee mug and a little bit of instant coffee, and I like to tell ’em, Hey, you know, I figured if I, I wanted to invite you to have a virtual cup of coffee, I should at least buy the coffee these days.

I would do it with like a little Starbucks gift card instead. Just, it looks a little classier, still fits inside the mug other way, right? Because some people are weird a little. And I, I would be too. And so it’s not just you, it’s me too. but I think feel like the, the ver the little instant coffee just doesn’t quite have the same trust level as, oh, that’s a Starbucks gift card.

I’ll go use that. but same, same type of idea. We’re just trying to get, get, get these meetings. And again, you follow up with it. after, after, you know, they’ve got it, easy to do via LinkedIn and see if they’re interested in meeting. Again, feedback on these types of things is all generally really positive.

Yeah. Every once in a while somebody will say, yeah, I don’t, I, I, I thought that was weird, but think about all the nos you might get to other types of prospecting and outreach and things like that. so again, just another way of, of, kind of showing up in a, in a way that’s different from everybody else.

So, question here from Suzanne. Are you going to talk about prospecting in a system or just a general recommendation? So I’ll, I’ll kind of give you my sequence here. We, we’ll have that coming up here and on one of the slides of kind of how, how I approach the, the whole thing. really big, the big thing is, is just think of it as a, you know, I think of it like a sequence.

follow up on multiple messages. and, and just. Try and try and take a, a human-like 

[00:29:55] approach to it. So that probably leads me right into this one here. It’s kind of the bottom line, right? Everybody, everybody has AI now, so it’s no longer bringing you an advantage. Kind of that fake personalization, you know, Hey, when they say, oh, I noticed that you do blah, blah, blah.

I know, I noticed you have a podcast. Hey, I love that. I love your love, your love what you guys are doing there, right? Every, everybody knows that you’re just, you’re just blowing smoke. and, and it is easy. And at this point it’s like, oh, I can ignore that. Put it right to spam. ’cause, ’cause, ’cause no, no real person says that they have a little, just a slightly bit more insight into, to something that you’ve done.

having a bot, you know, just comment on somebody’s latest post. Again, just noise. So really big thing is, is relevance right now is it’s relevant connections, relevant messages, relevant story, relevant content. Just be human take. You know what, what would, what would, a AI is kind of the average of everybody.

The only thing left that’s special is you, is your unique experiences, your unique you so do that. It might, it’ll be less polished, it’ll be less perfect. And people, people like that, right? Some of my best, most popular posts have just been me, me scribbling on like a, a notepad. No, no fancy graphics, nothing like that.

’cause right now, everybody, if it looks really, if it looks too good, people are, are sure it’s AI now. So pictures that, that aren’t perfect anymore. Selfies, doodles, stick figures, all that kind of stuff. Just do something real, do something human. This is kind of my, Suzanne. This is kind of my, my structure here for, for outreach is just take the Ango Montoya approach is, hello, my name is Amigo.

Right? Every, everybody knows that one. But start with an introduction. Use, be, try and be relevant. See if it’s relevant. And here’s the thing, be less confident about how relevant you think you are. I think like one of the big classic examples of people trying to, to figure out, oh, you know, we’re gonna be super relevant.

I, I connect with, companies in, the start. I connect with startups after they’ve had their first funding round. And, you know, every once in a while I’ll talk to a, to, to somebody who, who’s trying to sell into the startup space and they’ll say, yep, we want ’em to have, you know, this funding round.

And I say, EV, everybody wants, everybody wants to talk to ’em after their funding round. You’re just noise. At that point. You think now it’s relevant, but, but now, now it’s, it’s too crowded of a place. So trying to find that, that sweet spot of when your message, when, when your message is relevant to them before everybody wants to talk to 

[00:32:41] them.

I like to use the sequence, simply because I, again, I know people are busy, so when I’m messaging, if I message somebody on LinkedIn or, or via email, however, we’re, we’re kind of doing that campaign. I will try and. send multiple messages knowing that I don’t wanna, I don’t want to be a pest. I don’t want to, you know, bombard somebody, but up to three messages just tends to work a little bit better, because people meant to message, meant to reply, and then well.

They got busy and then 30 other messages poured into their inbox. So sending a sequence lets you get back in front of them for and get those people who almost replied. I commented on a, on somebody’s, LinkedIn post probably a week or two ago, saying essentially the same thing. Her, her, her stance was.

Why are you sending me three messages? I didn’t reply to the first one. That should have given you a hint. And the thing is, if you look at the numbers and you run enough of these campaigns, you’ll see that that is, that is just not true. ’cause there’s always people who, who meant to reply. I have one, I one earlier today, I said, Hey Gary, I, sorry I missed your messages.

Sorry I didn’t reply. I’ve been a little busy lately. I’m doing outreach and they’re apologizing to me for not replying. That’s crazy. And they, they don’t mean to reply. They don’t owe me anything. But yet people do that ’cause because you’re treating ’em like a human, you’re talking like a real person. but also because you messaged them three times.

Not once. Right? Once it’s easy to forget, it’s going, it’s just not going anywhere. So anytime you see those messages from people on LinkedIn saying, you know, outreach should only be ever be once, is just realize that those, those, those people are like the old man yelling at clouds and they’re just not. I understand that’s what they want, but they’re just not 

[00:34:32] relevant.

So sending those follow up messages and then make an offer, I think that’s, that’s probably one of the most, most important things about an outreach is what do you want to happen next? Be specific. Do you wanna, do you wanna meet for a virtual cup of coffee? Right? Did you, are you clever? Did you send them a a, a, did you get my, did you get my coffee mug?

You know, whatever it is. The more, the more, the more unique it is, the easier it is to kind of use that as a, as a follow up tool. but. Make an offer for what you want to happen next. Do you wanna send I like to send Loom videos just ’cause I’m, my, I don’t have capacity to do like, to, to meet with everybody anymore.

so I try and send out videos to kind of give people like a five minute overview and see if it makes sense to me, to meet with them. But. Do what? Do what’s gonna work for you. And ultimately, especially if you’re just getting started, meet with as many people and talk to as many real human beings as possible.

Stop asking chat GPT and just go talk to real people. You’ll get a lot more good, good feedback, 

[00:35:34] on want to do there. So if you need some help with this, and then I will, open up, for, for questions here, for any others that have come in. so if you do have a question here and you’ve got. Gimme about, 30 seconds.

We’ll run through this real quick and then, and then we’ll add, answer any questions and hey, then you guys can go about your day. So if you do need any help with this or you say, yeah, we just, I, I, I just don’t have time to do this. Try to, I, it didn’t work. and hey, if AI is working for you, you’re probably not on this session, right?

so, if you do need some help where it’s a human-based system. You can schedule a call with me directly at the appointment lab, and essentially what we can do is put this system in place for you where we’ll build it and manage it and run it. So what we’re really focusing is getting appointments for you on your calendar with the right people, at the right companies.

And here’s the thing, it’s done by real humans. So we’re not dealing with weird messages that don’t make any sense where you say, why? Why are we talking about the weather in Hawaii? Who knows? So if you’re interested in that, just shoot me a message at gary@pipelineallergy.com. Or like I said, go to, the appointment lab.com.

So, do we have any questions from anybody? Otherwise, I’ll, I’ll, I say thank you for coming on today. I always appreciate, you taking busy time outta your busy day. I think, I think we’re good. So. Thanks everybody for showing up today. Appreciate you having, having y’all here. And, we’ll be back, at the end of October.

We’ll talk about, in October. I always love to talk about the zombie method, which is, strategies for, reengaging with your dead leads and you know, if. Any, any churned clients and things like that. So it’s always a fun session. Hope to see you there. It’ll be towards, toward probably real close to the end of the month, usually on a, a Wednesday, whatever the last Wednesday of October is.

That’s probably when we’ll be here. So thanks again so much, everybody. Take care and we’ll see you next month.