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STRATEGY
TEN PAGES
ONE WORKSHEET
FREE, UNGATED
Outbound that earns a reply. Targeting from your own record, timing from signal, and a sequence built on the assumption that your buyer has already done the research.
JOSH DEMPSEY
STAGEONEGTM.COM
FOR
Teams whose reply rate stopped working
PAIRS WITH
The Win Loss Read
START WITH
Page eight. It costs nothing and usually beats new copy
01
The email has to do something a search cannot. That is the whole design constraint.
Outbound did not stop working. Undifferentiated outbound stopped working, and there is a great deal more of it than there used to be.
The tooling that let one rep send five hundred emails a week is now available to everyone, which means your prospect receives the output of that tooling from thirty companies. The usual response was to send more, personalise with a merge field, and call it a strategy.
Meanwhile the buyer changed. They research independently, they compare in communities you cannot see, and they form a view long before a seller enters the conversation. By the time your email lands they already know your category and probably your competitors.
If your message could have been sent to four hundred companies, it will be read like it was.
02
WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE
Fewer accounts, worked properly, beats more accounts worked at scale. Everything after this page is how to decide which ones.
02
Very good at work a human would otherwise skip. Very bad at judgment it will confidently fake.
Every part of this document assumes AI is doing the compression. The line is where judgment starts.
| GIVE TO THE MACHINE | KEEP WITH THE HUMAN |
|---|---|
| Account and contact research across web, filings, job posts and news | Deciding which accounts are actually worth pursuing |
| Synthesising that research into a one-page brief | Forming the point of view about what the research means |
| Drafting first-pass copy from a brief you wrote | Editing for voice, tension, and the specific ask |
| Monitoring a target list for trigger events | Judging whether a trigger is genuinely relevant or noise |
| Summarising calls and extracting commitments | Reading the room and deciding what to do about it |
| Pattern-matching which messaging is working | Deciding what to change, and why |
THE RULE
AI writes the draft. The human supplies the point of view and the edit. Never the reverse.
03
WHY IT MATTERS
The moment a machine decides what to say rather than how to say it, you are producing the thing your buyer has learned to delete.
03
Fit is structural and slow-moving. Signal is situational and expires.
A list is not a strategy. Before any sequence is written, every account needs a score on both axes.
| DIMENSION | WHAT YOU ARE MEASURING | WEIGHT |
|---|---|---|
| STRUCTURAL PAIN | Does the problem you solve exist at their stage and business model | 30% |
| FIRMOGRAPHIC FIT | Revenue band, headcount, geography, growth rate | 25% |
| ACCESS | Can you reach the economic buyer. Warm paths, events, existing relationships | 15% |
| TECHNOGRAPHIC FIT | Systems already in place that you complement or replace | 15% |
| TIMING SIGNAL | A trigger in the last ninety days indicating the problem is live | 15% |
THEN TIER
Tier 1, top 10%
Full research, multi-threaded, human-led. Twenty-five to forty accounts per rep, assigned by name.
Tier 2, next 30%
Insight-level personalisation, lighter touch, sequence-driven.
Tier 3
Exists to catch timing, not to force it.
04
THE DISTINCTION
Tier 1 gets worked whether or not a signal fired. Tier 3 only when one does.
SIGNAL
WINDOW
HIRING INTO YOUR FUNCTION
They are staffing the problem you solve, which means it is funded
IMMEDIATE
COMPETITOR CHURN
They left a vendor in your category. The problem is unsolved and top of mind
IMMEDIATE
LEADERSHIP HIRE
A new person with a mandate, a budget and something to prove
30–90 DAYS
FOOTPRINT CHANGE
New locations or regions. Their scope grew and their systems did not
30–90 DAYS
FUNDING OR ACQUISITION
Capital plus a plan, and usually a systems consolidation deadline
60–120 DAYS
PUBLIC INCIDENT
Something visibly failed. Handle with care and never lead with it
14 DAYS
THE PRACTICE
A weekly sweep of the Tier 1 and 2 lists that returns only what changed, short enough that a rep reads all of it. Ten minutes on Monday beats a dashboard nobody opens.
05
04
Naming who this is not for is the strongest trust signal available, and almost nobody uses it.
| LEVEL | WHAT IT MEANS | USE IT ON |
|---|---|---|
| SURFACE | Name, company, title, a recent post. Everyone does this and buyers read it as automation. | Nowhere. It costs more credibility than it earns. |
| SITUATIONAL | A specific thing happening at their business, and why it creates the problem you solve. | Tier 2, at scale, assembled from a research brief. |
| INSIGHT | A point of view about their business they had not considered, that stands alone even if they never reply. | Tier 1, written by a human, one at a time. |
STRUCTURE
Open with the observation
Not the introduction. Who you are is the least interesting thing in the message and it can wait.
State the consequence
What the observation means for them, in a sentence they would recognise as true.
Make one specific ask
Not “open to a chat.” A dated, small, concrete next step.
Leave the edge in
Name who this is not for. It is the fastest way to be believed by the people it is for.
06
THE TEST
If the reply you would be happiest with is “sure, send me some time,” the ask was too small to be worth answering.
05
Structure exists so a rep is not deciding what to do next while looking at a screen.
Every touch has a job, and no two do the same job.
| DAY | CHANNEL | THE JOB OF THIS TOUCH |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | The observation and the consequence. One ask | |
| 03 | Connect, no pitch. Presence, not pressure | |
| 05 | A different angle on the same problem, not a follow-up on the first | |
| 08 | PHONE | Reference the email. Two sentences, then a question |
| 12 | Proof: a document, a number, something they can use without replying | |
| 16 | A short message tied to something they published or shared | |
| 21 | The close-out. Name that you will stop, and mean it |
TWO RULES
Never send the same message twice in different words
If touch five is touch one rephrased, it teaches the buyer that ignoring you is free.
Actually stop on day twenty-one
The close-out only works if it is true. Move them to a signal list and come back when something changes.
07
WHAT THIS BUYS YOU
A rep who never has to improvise, and a buyer who is never sent the same thought twice.
06
The accounts going untouched are the ones most likely to buy.
| METRIC | WHAT IT TELLS YOU | HEALTHY |
|---|---|---|
| REPLY RATE | Whether the message earned attention | 5–10% on Tier 1 |
| POSITIVE REPLY RATE | Whether it earned the right attention. The number that matters most | 2–4% |
| MEETING HELD RATE | Whether the interest was real or polite | 70%+ of booked |
| TIER 1 COVERAGE | Share of named accounts touched this quarter. The one nobody tracks | 100% |
| EMAILS SENT | Nothing. It is an input dressed as an outcome | Do not report it |
WHERE TO START
Do not rebuild the motion. Take your Tier 1 list and check what share of it a human has touched this quarter.
08
WHAT YOU WILL FIND
At most companies that number is well under half. Fixing it costs nothing and usually beats any change to copy.
07
Three signals, not six. A team can watch three.
The three trigger events that most reliably precede a good deal at your business, and how each one gets detected.
| SIGNAL 1, AND HOW IT GETS DETECTED | |
| SIGNAL 2, AND HOW IT GETS DETECTED | |
| SIGNAL 3, AND HOW IT GETS DETECTED | |
| SHARE OF TIER 1 TOUCHED BY A HUMAN THIS QUARTER |
09
ONE HONEST ANSWER
If the last row is a guess, that is the finding. Go and count it before you change anything else.
08
WHAT TO
DO NOW
01
Count what share of your Tier 1 list a human has touched this quarter. Do this before rewriting a single email.
02
Score the list on the five dimensions on page four, then cut Tier 1 to twenty-five to forty accounts per rep, assigned by name.
03
Pick three signals, decide exactly how each gets detected, and run the ten-minute Monday sweep.
04
Only then rewrite the sequence, and check that no two touches do the same job.
NO. 06
OF 06
If you run this yourself and your reply rate recovers without sending more, that was the point. Nothing here is held back for a paid version.
JOSH DEMPSEY · STAGEONEGTM.COM · JOSH@STAGEONEGTM.COM