I'll cold call for you.

Try me out for £1,000.

30-50 conversations with your target market.

I'll provide the list, mobile numbers, and reporting.

All I need to know is the problems you solve, who you solve them for, and why they'd be motivated to solve them.

If it goes well, we keep working together.

If not, you walk away.

Mark Bangs

“Just pick up the phone to grow your business.”

It’s ok advice, but it misses most of what actually makes outbound work.

Before a single dial happens, you need to:

- Build a quality list without Sales Nav sprinkling in Yoga Instructors and Chemistry Professors

- Find reliable data that isn't full of wrong numbers

- Set up a CRM so you can stay on top of tasks

- Choose and configure a dialler so you're not manually calling everything

- Write and refine messaging that doesn't make you sound like a call centre in Bangalore

- Track follow ups (it takes us 4.2 dial attempts on avg to get a conversation with someone)

- Work the list consistently

That’s a big ask for a founder who’s already wearing five hats.

What usually happens is this:

A few good sessions, a few missed ones, and that non-negotiable “prospecting time” ends up being quietly removed from the calendar.

At that point, most revert back to relying on referrals or inbound,  neither of which are scaleable or consistent.

The truth is, cold calling works.

But it only works when it’s done systematically, every day, at volume, by people who live and breathe it.

That’s why founders outsource it.

Not because they can’t do it but because it's a ballache.

I book qualified meetings for founders and MDs 📞

Spoke with a company recently who said they don’t cold call as they know everyone in their market. 

Yet I routinely see their MD twerking on every teenager's post to get their super secret AI prompt or n8n workflow for lead gen.

Maybe he just didn't like me.

Or he’d spoken with Céan.

That’s more likely.

🚨 Comment "BRO" to boost my reach. 🚨

If your outbound sales efforts aren’t landing, it might not be your pitch or your people.

It might be your list.

If you’re calling people who don’t feel the pain you solve, or who aren’t motivated to fix it, you’re probably wasting time and money.

Before you invest in outsourcing or hiring salespeople, make sure you know your target market inside and out.

If you don’t, that’s fine.

Just recognise that your goal shifts from selling to learning.

Use outbound to validate your assumptions.

Every “no,” “maybe,” and “tell me more” gives you clues about your market.

The wrong list makes sales impossible.

The right list allows you to learn exactly what matters to your ICP, what questions/objections they're likely to raise, and ultimately what will motivate them to spend money with you.

LinkedIn engagement ≠ quality service

Instead of paying someone to do your outbound sales because their posts get loads of likes and comments, think about:

1. What are their clients saying about them?
(If anything)

2. How many will actually vouch for them?
(We can point to several)

3. What is their overall retention rate?
(Ours is 92.3%)

The "fractional SDR" space is getting more popular as people realise they can just post selfies on LinkedIn and work for themselves.

It's important to vet these people and ask what kind of results their clients are seeing.

If you've got monkeys dialling for you, don't be surprised if it ends up being a banana skin for your business (yeah I know, terrible...)

🙈

The list is the foundation of any outbound campaign.

If the list isn't right, everything else falls apart.

You can have great messaging delivered expertly, but it's all for nought you’re not speaking to the right people.

By “the right people,” I mean those who actually have the problem you solve, and who are motivated to solve it.

This is why clarity on your ICP isn’t optional.

If you’re not clear on who you help and why, you’re probably not ready to hire an outsourced sales agency.

And hiring internally could be disastrous.

That said, outbound can still play a role in finding that clarity.

If you have a working hypothesis of who your ICP is and what your value proposition might be, cold calling is the fastest way to test it.

Every conversation is a data point.

Every objection, question, or nugget of feedback helps you refine your message and/or targeting

By having live conversations you’ll very quickly know whether to pivot or double down.

I'd never do "brand partnership" posts.

Mainly cos I never get asked.

Researching prospects before cold calling can be a waste of time.

Hypothetical A:

+ 6 hours of dialling time
+ 5 mins of research per call
+ 2 min avg. call duration
= 51 dials (assuming you don't eat, drink, or pee)

15% connect rate = 8 connects
80% connect to conversation rate = 6 conversations

Hypothetical B:

+ 6 hours of dialling time
+ 2 min avg. call duration
= 180 dials

15% connect rate = 27 connects
65% connect to conversation rate = 18 conversations

So for all you hyper-personalisation "warm call" advocates, a genuine question:

Is the quality of your 6 conversations higher enough than my 18 conversations to justify having 1/3 as many?

Could it make more sense to build a list and go after it with a relevant message?

GetAccept

This marks a pivot back to Sales Development for a season. Working with a key team of Account Executives to open doors in the high-potential UK market. My time as an AE was hugely rewarding and educational, but I didn't achieve the results I wanted. Results first, position second.

Senior Sales Development Representative

Full-cycle sales executive role. 

> 2nd place in terms of outbound deal generation for 2023, despite starting in March
> Worked primarily in Danish (a foreign language) with the Danish market
> Won internal AE competition "Masters of MEDDPICC"
> Received MEDDPICC Masterclass qualification and MEDDICC's Value Pyramid certification
> Discovery call featured in Revenue Rebels online event, critiqued by Morgan J. Ingram, Carl Carrell (CRO, GetAccept) and Alex Olley (CRO, Reachdesk)

Account Executive

Drip

This role functions like a combination between BDR Team Lead + Junior AE:
• Won "King of the Year" award for most demos booked company-wide in 2022 (241).
- Q1 2023: 131% of MRR quota, stopped in Feb.
• 2022: 103% to MRR quota / 107% to demo quota.
additional remit - 
• Building full-cycle sales experience by attending product demos
• Training and coaching for outbound team
• CRM/commission sheets/comms/financial record keeping 
• List-building w/ Builtwith/Linkedin Sales Nav
• Filling in for Head of Outbound in their absence

Outbound Performance Manager 

*Sleeknote was acquired by Drip in February 2022*


• Won record for most outbound MRR generated in a month/by a single rep.
• Record for biggest outbound-booked customer.
• Record for most meetings booked in a day (11).
• Highest ACV in outbound department.
• Contributed to a new team record for most total demos booked during a conference. 
• Covered UK and Swedish Markets.
• Pioneered a 2-week outbound campaign with teammate to churned customers in the United States. Created scripting and sequences. Executed. Compiled findings into a report for the team.
• Trusted-advisor/problem-centric selling approach: combining phone (which is 👑), email, linkedin, video, memes and gifs.
• Sales tech enthusiast: always on the lookout for better tech to serve our team.
• Sales enablement: working with marketing to create industry and role-specific pain points.

Senior Business Development Representative

Sleeknote

• Record for fastest customer from job start (2 weeks).
• Hit 133% of quota in first full month (due in part to a high-performing marketing campaign) but had 2 incredibly tough months after. 
• Persevered and made it work in month #4. Did research on my best demo's booked, and found a vertical. Designed a list and executed. Ended at 153% of quota. This is my proudest moment from this stage.
• Experimenting with video selling.
• Using company and self-created lists made with Sales Navigator or a good old-fashioned google search.
• Gave a presentation on the Challenger Sale, led discussion groups.

*Sleeknote was acquired by Drip 2/2022*

Kingdom English

Self-employed as English language teacher, proofreader and copywriter.
• Business creation: met customers through word of mouth, printed advertisements, booking meetings, homepage and digital advertisements.
• Hundreds of online meetings and lessons completed.
• Tailored proposals and solutions, completed primarily Business English courses with 100+ students. 
• Consistent top-score ratings in connection with classroom rapport and course quality. 
• 100% passed examinations from students in Cambridge C2 Proficiency exam class.
• Created SoMe content, including 5+ blog posts to create customers.

Founder/Teacher

NowBelieve

Outreach coordination in a Christian charity organisation. 
• Business Dev. foundation developed: 'cold approach' and conversation with 1000+ people at street-level. 
• Passionate, friendly and empathetic tone and approach. 
• Public-speaking, over 100+ events: in public arenas, churches, and x2 in Trafalgar Square, London.
• Fearless and empathetic in high pressure surroundings. Baptism of fire in how to handle stress, opposition and rejections. 
• Coordinated 10+ UK city-wide events with cooperating partners and volunteers - from concept to realisation. 
• Meeting booking, cold calling and stakeholder management with contacts across the UK.

Outreach Coordinator

Turn Trust.

Church-based Charity 
• Led weekly outreach events in Central London with a team of 3-10.
• Generated dozens of hours experience in speaking with countless people from a variety of backgrounds.
• Hosted a 6-part course to encourage community engagement and train new outreach personnel.

Event Co-ordinator/Intern

I work with energetic midmarket revenue leaders with a bias for action. These leaders are typically focused on one of the following metrics:

🌇 Generating Revenue Growth 🌇

📉 Decreasing Customer Acquisition Cost 📉

⚖️ Generating a higher Return on Sales / Operating Profit Margin ⚖️

⌛️ Shortening Sales Cycle Length ⌛️

…in this journey towards goal, their sales directors and AE's are seeing improved performance, gaining a level of oversight they’ve never had, and winning key deals. While buyer-champions are enabled with the content and context they need to convince an ever-growing buying committee. 

✔ GetAccept executes all of this via an “asset” – its Digital Sales Room platform

+++++

About me:

A Catholic, father, and husband. I'm motivated by serving my company and customers with excellence and flair, and building a legacy of service based upon memorable experiences - where prospects respond with those amazing words for outbound'ing ears:

"I don't normally take these calls or respond to these messages, but..."

These are the 4 cardinal virtues of my approach to sales development:

- Audacity (fortune favours the bold, you've got to innovate and take creative risks to break through the noise)
- Persistence (this is mostly a game of sifting through 'no's' to get to 'yes')
- Empathy ("giving a rip" about your prospects, as Larry Levine would put it, and tailoring outreach to the person, as well as the persona)
- Pragmatism (channel agnosticism, speak to your prospects where they are)

+++++

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The Battle

Mark Bangs

James W. Hewitt

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taplio

The Battle

Mark Bangs

James W. Hewitt

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mark Bangs's LinkedIn Performance

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