Hey Nie,
John Barrows has trained sales teams at LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and Slack, and his take on outbound is clear: a good hook only gets you so far if you don’t understand your buyer.
Too many reps send a decent email, then get caught on their heels when they have to hold a real conversation based on an AI-generated icebreaker that doesn’t connect to anything the buyer actually cares about.
Once they connect, the gap is obvious because they fall back on questions that could have been answered with basic research:
“Tell me about your business.”
“What are your top priorities?”
Those questions put the work back on the buyer. They also make it look like you don’t understand their world well enough to help.
In the outbound efficiency playbook, John recommends coming in with a point of view the buyer can react to:
“We’ve been working with other CIOs in healthcare, and the top priorities we’re seeing are X, Y, and Z. Are you seeing something similar?”
