How I Closed a €10,000 Contract with Just One Email: My Tier 1 and Tier 2 Prospecting Process.
Two weeks ago, I sent five emails and closed one contract.
€10,000 with just one email.
Was it just luck? Maybe.
I like to think it was a combination of factors, but most importantly, it was about doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.
As a solopreneur, I manage everything myself, running my business 365 days a year.
I could work 15 hours a day if I wanted to, but I have to say no to many things to keep myself focused.
However, there is only one thing that I never skip or say no to prospecting. I never stop prospecting.
Today, I want to talk to you about my prospecting process.
As a solopreneur, I need to maintain a healthy pipeline of high-quality opportunities. I am very rigorous about prospecting and aim to generate 10-13 outbound discoveries per month.
I am lucky to have a strong presence on LinkedIn, and thanks to my posts and network, I receive an additional 2-3 opportunities.
But outbound prospecting is always there, day in and day out, rain or shine.
Many business owners and sales professionals treat outbound communication like a big container.
They lump everything together, using the same tools, emails, and templates.
Alternatively, they lack consistency, doing it one day and forgetting the next, with poor structure and accountability.
This is where most people fail.
You cannot treat all your outbound prospects in the same way.
You also cannot simply let it go – you have to stay consistent.
For you to succeed, it's essential to have a healthy top-of-funnel pipeline.
Here is my process: a blend of 15+ years of sales experience, 5+ years of sales leadership, over 10 courses, and more than 100 meetings and discussions.
The Tools That I Use
Apollo (€49ish/month), Sales Navigator (€80ish/month), Hubspot CRM. (free)
The Segmentation
I structure my outbound prospecting by dividing my market into two tiers: Tier 1 and Tier 2.
Tier 1 consists of my top leads, those who fit my Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) very well, and Tier 2 consists of those who are slightly less perfect from the outside but still fall within my ICP.
My Tier 1 Process
The Sales Equation is where I have all my numbers lined up, along with the number of activities I need to achieve.
If you need help getting started with the Sales Equation, check out my post from last week.
Then I open my Sales Navigator and access the home page, where I receive daily insights. I have previously saved 30-50 Tier 1 leads to work on.
I search for a reason to send them an email, such as an interesting article they posted or a trigger like the company’s growth. Also if they are hiring for specific roles. (sales roles, in my case).
Once I find a trigger, I open my email account and begin drafting the email.
The goal is to personalise the entire email. Schedule the email to be sent the following day at 8 am.
Next, add the data to your prospecting board and set a reminder to follow up after five working days, using the Sales Equation.
This is a fully manual and tailored process.
There is no AI, automation, or anything else involved. It has to be manual for one reason: it has to feel personal.
My tier 1 emails are all crafted and personalized. There are no shortcuts here.
However, you can expect an 8-10% cold-to-discovery rate, which is 7-8 times higher than my Tier 2 process.
I try to send at least 5-10 new emails every day, if possible.
My Tier 2 Process
This is for my second-in-line ICP. Here, we incorporate some automation.
We begin by using my sales equation, which outlines our goal and the level of activities required to achieve our revenue goal. Same as the previous tier.
I use Apollo to run a search, select the desired leads, and add them to my lists.
While still on Apollo, I reach the sequences part where I created fully automated email sequences for each ICP.
I personalized these emails as much as possible, including relevant information for each job role.
To avoid getting flagged, I limited the maximum number of emails sent per day to 50.
Aim for these KPI's:
Open rate > 50%
Bounce/spam rate < 5%
Interested rate (discovery call) > 1.5%
These sequences run in the background, but I check the KPIs weekly.
If I notice a low response rate, I adjust the subject and the first three lines of the email to improve results.
From this, I usually get 3-4 discoveries each month and 3-4 negative responses.
Summary
Always be prospecting.
This is true for any company out there. However, it’s also true that most people fail at it, and many leaders don’t know how to drive outbound and prospecting activities from their teams.
There are two things you can start implementing right now:
Segment your market and have one manual prospecting effort for Tier 1 and one automated for Tier 2.
Be consistent and use the Sales Equation and the Prospecting Board to hit your daily KPIs. Consistency is the most difficult but also the game changer.
It's neither easy nor quick, but what’s the alternative?
Thanks for reading this far. Talk to you next week. Ciao!
