Disqualification: The Single Most Important Step In Outbound

Disqualification: The Single Most Important Step In Outbound

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There’s one prediction I can make with 100% certainty: Outbound will be harder next year than it was this year.

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Right now, it takes an average of 12-15 outbound touches across email, phone, and social to make contact with a buyer.

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With that amount of effort, you should be disqualifying the majority of your accounts. They don’t deserve any of your effort or attention.

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A client of ours sells a cybersecurity solution. Tons of potential use cases, industry verticals, and personas.

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When we started working with their SDR team, they were:

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- Going after over nearly a dozen industry verticals

- Trying to outbound into 4-5 personas across those industries

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And the entire time I was thinking, “How the hell do you wrap your head around all of the different talk tracks?”

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We asked the client to look at their data:

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- What are the top two industries where you land the most meetings and create the most qualified opportunities?

- What persona do you typically start those conversations with?

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Here’s what they found:

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- The majority of their pipelines come from manufacturers and healthcare

- The majority of meetings are with heads/directors of security and plant managers (their solution helps with operational technology, the “OT” part of cybersecurity)

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Then we told the SDRs to focus only on those accounts. That simple fix—narrowing their focus on the lowest-hanging fruit—increased qualified meetings by 22% during the 90‑day period we worked together.

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Here's how to put this into action:

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✅ Pull closed/won & closed/lost data

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- SMB rep: Pull the last 50-100 deals you worked

- Mid-market or small enterprise rep: Pull the last 25-50 deals you worked

- Strategic rep: Pull the last 10 deals you worked

- Sales, ops, or enablement leaders: Pull the last 6-12 months of deals your team has worked

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✅ Identify patterns

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Who’s the easiest to sell to?

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- Highest win rates

- Largest deal sizes

- Shortest sales cycles

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Who gets the best results from our solution?

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- Case studies

- Testimonials

- Reviews

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What characteristics do these clients share?

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- Industry, sub-industry, or niche

- Company size or headcount growth

- Revenue band

- Tech stack

- Number of locations

- Department size or growth

- Geography

- Funding status

- Triggers

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✅ Narrow down your segmentation

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Options:

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- By Niche/Industry: Find similar companies selling in the same niche (e.g. fitness supplement)

- Size: Find similar-sized companies (e.g. <50 employees, small marketing teams)

- Trigger: Find companies experiencing similar problems (e.g. lacking cart functionality, upsells, express checkout)

- Combination: Layer in multiple segments (fitness supplements, <50 employees, low cart functionality)

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Now look at how targeted your outbound approach will be.

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~~~

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You should be disqualifying the majority of accounts from an outbound standpoint. And put all of your efforts into the top accounts most deserving of your attention.