Outreach on different budgets

Welcome to the eighth edition of Revenews 8️⃣

🇬🇧 Newsletter people don’t hang out in real life so much, especially on this side of the pond. So I’m organising a little London newsletter meet up in later this month.

Open invitations aside, lets dive in! 🚀

1. How to outreach: The rich and the poor

2. Insights for creators

3. Find sponsors by posting on Twitter?

4. Sorry in advance for this joke…

^{How to approach ad sales on different budgets?}

Some newsletter operators start as established ballers, some are students, or a side-hustlers. I’ve been around a variety of budgets and learnt how to make sales as efficient as possible, with the tools you have. Today. we’re focusing on the sales and pre-sales stages.

The keep this consistent, well look at 5 key areas of the sales process.

🥩 Where/how to find those juicy LEADS

📤 Email outreach

🗄️ Deal management/CRM

🏋️‍♀️ Humans

👨‍💻 Tech stack and other stuff

As a heads up for bias, I use/love Apollo for data, sequences & more. There are other great options in Instantly/Lemlist, plus most CRMs do have good email automation features. IMO Apollo’s ease-of-use/functionality/integrations makes it a superior primary, or at least ancillary tool.

🥇 ZERO / NADA / ZILCH

Fortunately, you can get going with sales on empty pockets.

🥩 For leads, follow other newsletters, screenshot ads when your doom-scrolling, take pictures of OOH ads, track recent fundraises on Techcrunch & StrictlyVC. Target small/medium brands, in similar publications, they’ll have small budgets, but be easiest to convert.

📤 The free version of Apollo is awesome, unlimited email addresses, automated sequences, even call recording. If you’re against fully automated emails, then it has super easy-to-use templating features that integrates into Gmail that beats copy/pasting, plus follow up reminders. Use the free version of Calendly.

🗄️ Deal organisation can get messy fast. A great free pipeline tracking hack is using starred/flagged & inbox folders to track your sales conversations. You can use spreadsheets (yuck) or Notion. Google calendar works well for tasks, and Apollo has a free nudge/task tool.

🏋️‍♀️ You can’t afford to hire anyone, so you’re now a fractional salesperson. Perhaps find a co-founder, with differing/complimentary skills. Timeblock 1 hour each morning to do outreach. Don't let the urgent drown out the important.

👨‍💻 Warm up your emails with the free trial on Instantly, Apollo or others.

🔒 Small budget

🥩 You might want to try find a cheap way to outsource or automate prospecting. Can you build you’re own scraper? Can you hire someone on Fiver to create prospect lists? Crunchbase is great and cheap for fundraising.

📤 Consider buying a paid plan from Apollo, Instantly, or others.

🗄️ Consider a cheap CRM. Well reviewed free/very cheap examples include EngageBay and SalesMate. More established, whilst still cheap options are Pipedrive and Monday.com. I’ve seen some use Notion well, but I’d advise a ‘proper’ CRM purchase when you can justify it.

🏋️‍♀️  Consider a VA or freelancers to offload time-consuming tasks, prospecting and/or outreach is a good place to start. Get a designer (or AI) to make that media kit sexy.

👨‍💻 Consider cheap but useful tools like Loom.

🥳 Moderate budget

🥩 Consider investing in WhoSponsorStuff, great dudes with a great tool. Track a cohort of the most similar newsletters. If you’re too niche for WSS, go to relevant events/conferences, sponsors for that event WILL sponsor your newsletter. Buy LinkedIn Premium if you haven’t already.

📤 Continue upgrading your sequencing tool, or transition outreach to your CRM, or integrations therein. Buy an email verification tool and integrate it into the workflow (8 of the best here).

🗄️ Buy a full-fledged CRM. Pipedrive is great value for money, and Hubspot is a great option (I prefer Hubspot). Make sure you invest the time or money in setting it up fully, the more features you make use of, the more time it’ll save you, and money it’ll make you.

🏋️‍♀️ Definitely hire to offload the tasks you dislike, or take too long. Assuming you want to retain a CEO-esque role, begin the creation of a sales team. This could be a VA, part/full-time local SDR, fractional sales consultant, or perhaps a full time local salesperson if you have the deals to justify it.

👨‍💻 Consider buying Zapier or another automation software. Generally, start to favour processes/tools that scale.

🤑 No expense spared !

🥩 Use WhoSponsorStuff, and perhaps MediaRadar too. You should always have easy-access to leads. Use Megahit to reveal your subscribers who work in marketing. Go to the big conferences your subscribers are likely to attend.

📤 Apollo is still great , so you could max that out, or rely on your CRMs features. Maximise outreach efficiency whilst maintaining quality messaging.

🗄️ Don’t look further afield than Hubspot or Salesforce. I’ve not used Salesforce, but most people tell me it’s superior, due to deeper functionality and more automations. If I were loaded and buying a CRM tomorrow, I’d go with that.

🏋️‍♀️ Hire full-time experienced sales people in your country, or your main ad market. IMO, nothing beats in person collaboration, at least occasionally. You’ll want them to be young, hungry, high-frequency, and willing to get their hands dirty. Offer a lucrative commission structure that beats the competition. Hire a VP/Head of Sales that has a clear vision for structuring the sales team.

👨‍💻 You could hire an automation consultant, or a red hot Head of Sales/Sales Ops person. If the latter, make sure that they’re well versed in the latest AI and automation capability. Automate notes and record your sales calls with Fireflies or Apollo.

🧐 Recommended Reading

I discovered the Relatable Creator this week, which is a really honest read about how to consistently show up online, balance life & work, plus make money.

The Relatable Creator helps you build your dream brand & life.

If you’re an online creator, you’ll find the insights refreshingly raw and practical.

Subscribe here.

📰 Newsletter News

🇬🇧 As mentioned, I’m organising a London newsletter meet up. Super casual, currently it’s 5-10 people in the space meeting human-to-human in a pub. Free on November 23rd? Reply to this email!

📉 Why most publishers are not enjoying Q4 already.

🤖 Twitter ads seem great for CAC, but this is the biggest problem with X.

📊 This newsletter-first company is looking to raise even more $$$

👏 Can you find sponsors just by posting on Twitter? Apparently yes.

🤣 Inbox Banter

You shouldn’t take a lawyer’s advice over emails

Because that would be…

E-legal.