The Future of Cold Outreach and Lucky Nickels

“It’s just a nickel,” my friend tells me as I stand back up from retrieving the abandoned coin off the sidewalk. O ye of little faith. What they failed to realize was that this was a lucky nickel. Just five minutes after obtaining the half dime I received an email letting me know that I got the job I was interviewing for. Satisfied with my luck, I passed the disc on to my doubtful friend who used it the next day to scratch a lottery ticket where they won $500 proving my hypothesis that this was a lucky nickel.

I have caught myself looking at LinkedIn more than usual; logging in a daily average of 8 minutes on my phone. Because I keep my network on the app small, I get a lot of recommended posts in my main feed from thought leaders and viral content related to my field. There is a specific type of post I keep seeing and it is beginning to get on my nerves.

LinkedIn Cold Outreach Claims

“Never start an email with, “Good morning.” Say, “Hello,” instead in case they look at the email in the afternoon. Also, hello is much more professional than hi and sets the tone for the email. This is the definitive best opener for an email.”

It would not surprise me to find my imagined post actually on LinkedIn somewhere. The formula for this kind of post is simple. Introduce the post with a commonly used practice that will be identified as a huge no-no that will make a person hate you. Give a slightly different version of the no-no with logical justification that makes the alternative appear more attractive. Close the post with a claim that this change is the way to do something and that it will lead to success. Maybe even give some results that you observed when making this change.

I see this template being used multiple times almost every time I open LinkedIn. These thought leaders are somehow managing to consistently disrupt cold outreach with self-proclaimed genius email and cold call architecture. I’ll go into more detail about why these posts are scummy, but before that I want to focus on why the people posting this kind of content are wrong to believe that their small change was the key to their success.

Logical Missteps

Returning to my lucky nickel story, it is obvious that the good luck me and my friend had while we possessed the nickel was a coincidence. It’s not as if I hadn’t picked up the nickel the person sending me the job offer would have turned me down. It’s likely that the decision was made at least several hours before I even saw the nickel. The two events are unrelated. Their proximity to each other caused me to see some kind of connection that was reinforced by my friend winning money whenever he was in possession of the coin.

While not as evident, this is likely the same kind of logical misstep these influencers are making. Sales is about probability. Even the most effective salespeople cast a net much bigger than what they end up bringing in. Every move is made with the intention of increasing the probability of moving a prospect down the funnel. What is not always apparent is how much the odds are increased by any specific tweak. Arguably the most significant factor to success is a firm understanding of the basics, i.e. speaking confidently, finding pain points, demonstrating relevant value, etc.

As people get more comfortable with the basics, they start to adapt the processes they were taught to make them their own. Including custom language, focusing on specific aspects of a relationship, and any other practice they believe will nudge the odds of success. When they start to get wins, they can end up associating that success with their changes when in reality it is likely that a significant proportion of the success is strictly due to a solid grasp of the basics that was starting to come as they made their approach their own.

These misconceptions are then cast on new entrants to the industry. When giving feedback to someone who is new, it’s easy to dump on that person the tweaks that you believe led you to personal success and point out all the areas they differ from you. Another reason for this kind of feedback is that it is easily observable. Using a new opener can be observed at the next touch point while building confidence takes considerable time. This misdiagnosis slows down the progress of newbies as they focus on using refined approaches before properly developing the basics.

With most “do this, not this,” claims online it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine a significant enough connection between some of these small changes people recommend and their contribution to results. Where is the graph that scientifically shows that there is a statistically significant relationship between ending your email with a sign off that starts with a vowel and getting a reply back. These claims are even more dubious in fields with infrequent sell-through or slow sale cycle like B2B businesses. The time it takes to see the results of a perhaps inconsequential action can be too long to measure and there is often no control.

It's remarkable how ignorant people can be to their own situation. It’s too common for people to disregard all the relevant factors contributing to success or failure. Was the new copy particularly effective or is overall reception increasing due to the time of year or recent market changes. Would they have reacted differently if a slightly different approach was used. If I were to have held on to that lucky nickel, I would not have seen such great fortunes granted to me every day. Things would level out and I would need to admit that the timing was just a coincidence.

If you have worked in sales, you have probably noticed those that are successful can differ highly in personality and strategy. Their style works but is not necessarily unique to success. The common ground these top reps share is a solid foundation of sales. If there was an obvious true best way to do something then only that workflow would be taught and practiced.

Future of Data Decision Algorithms

From what is being preached and praised on LinkedIn, it appears that not everyone is a good sales scientist. People seem to be frequently making statistically insignificant data driven decisions. Even with easily trackable metrics it is difficult to determine the causality of all actions in the sales process. This gap will one day be filled by a fantastic use of AI.

Algorithms will become so efficient and advanced that they will know the exact actions that made or broke a sale. The warehouse of training data available for models to train on is only going to grow and become more accessible, allowing these machines to be increasingly sophisticated. Eventually, their base intelligence will be so advanced that they will only need a handful of interactions to identify ineffectiveness in and fine tune outreach allowing for the smallest of companies to take advantage of this technology. Today’s flurries of snow will be eliminated to reveal the once obfuscated neighboring mountains in the mountain range of sales. Global peaks in performance will be discovered that surpass what anyone thought was possible.

Today, AI in sales is rooted in the incorrect assumptions made by people and its involvement is mainly restricted to text creation based on prompts or email organization with copilots. In the biggest organizations there is not a ton of general interaction between prospects and AI. Organizations that have successfully implemented AI in the aforementioned ways might see success but their superiority over previous methods is not intense enough to call for an immediate restructuring of the industry. I have not heard an overpowering uproar of companies broadcasting the incredible impact AI has had on pipeline. The incoming disruptive change will trump all AI innovations made so far when it comes to data driven decisions on outreach. Someday, far into the future, communication can be reserved for only the people who will buy.

Why these posts will never go away

This formula is an easy way to get attention that is low effort and low risk. It is simple to follow, says nothing truly new, and is very agreeable. People like to sound profound. It’s good for their personal brand to get as much attention as possible on LinkedIn like on any other platform. It’s a shame that the same behavior that works on traditional social media is what works on what was supposed to be a professional networking site. It’s obvious LinkedIn values frequency over quality when it comes to how users interact with the platform. Their implementation of games and short form scrollable video content clearly demonstrates this.

The type of posts I talked about here are not even the worst of what LinkedIn has to offer. Earlier this week I saw a post about some ridiculous scenario that ended with something along the lines of, “The story is fake, but the lesson is real.” This poster at least had the sense to admit that their situation was made up. I assume most of the crazy scenarios people post are fake, designed to get as much engagement as possible.

There isn’t anything wrong with building your personal brand and trying to attract attention from colleagues by highlighting useful information you came across or interesting thoughts you had. I wouldn’t have this blog if I was against it. What I take offense with is people spewing unproven nonsense like it’s the gospel or trying to pass off common knowledge as their own original work. It’s okay to say what’s been said before but be upfront about where your information came from. An acknowledgement needs to be made of the various factors that contribute to success instead of hyper focusing on one part of a process with questionable influence. People will not stop posting this kind of content until it stops getting traction and it will never stop getting traction until enough people know how to judge the credibility of what they see online. One day maybe we’ll all wise up and learn to direct our focus to what matters and think logically.

It might happen... Sh’yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.