7 Simple SDR Hacks to Get a Few More Leads Every Month

Follow up with OOO prospects

The average number of prospects that might be out of office at any given time is 3-5% (or higher, depending on the season). I personally love getting OOO replies because they can be a great source of additional information about a prospect, mostly a direct phone number or an alternative point of contact in the company.

The problem here is that their auto-replies in response to your outreach might stop your sequence, meaning they won’t receive any follow-ups.

To make sure none of these prospects falls through the cracks, you can use our playbook to handle OOO replies.

First of all, set up a separate sequence with a 2-week delay to follow up with the prospects once they are back in the office (and personalize those follow-ups or include additional touchpoints based on the info from the auto-reply).

As a second step, you can also have a referral sequence running in parallel where you can add the contacts mentioned by the person who is currently OOO.

Just like that, you can get a few more warm leads with little to no effort.

Make the most out of referrals

Speaking of referrals, this is another amazing way to get a few more booked meetings quickly and easily. Aside from the recommended points of contact from the OOO auto-replies, there are more sources to get those referral leads. 

For example, you can look up “connections of” on Sales Navigator to target connections of someone you personally know (of course, it’s best to let them know that you will be using their name in this case). 

Or you can also reach out to the happy customers you’ve previously closed to ask for referrals – if you haven’t done that already. But hey, even if you have, maybe they have a new person to recommend?

Another creative tactic here is to intentionally build a list of non-decision-makers at the target account (entry/junior level employees in the relevant department) and contact them in the first place asking for the right person to talk to. 

Obviously, it’s easier to reach an SDR than a VP of Sales. And once you do, the chances are pretty high that they will point you in the right direction or forward your emails to the person you should talk to. Our stats for this sequence prove this point.

Once you hear back from that initial point of contact, you can also get more info about their current stack or processes to customize your messages when approaching a decision-maker. 

All you need to do next is use those contacts you’ve been referred to in a dedicated sequence targeted at decision-makers. Just make sure to mention the person you’ve been talking to before and use any additional information you’ve collected to make your message more relevant.

Reengage lost or stalled opportunities

Your CRM is a goldmine of sales opportunities. And I’m not talking about the prospects that are midway through your pipeline. I mean the prospects who have been closed/lost, stalled, or have simply ghosted you at some point.

Go through the recently lost opportunities and try to reengage them with a different approach. Pay attention to the reason why they dropped out of your pipeline before. 

For example, if a prospect said that it was not the right time, you could check in a couple of months later to see if anything changed (and address any other sales objections they might have). Or maybe, you’ve added a feature that a prospect was lacking at that time? It also makes sense to reconnect with the prospect in case they have been promoted or switched to a different company. 

Demo no-shows present another prominent re-engagement opportunity here, as well as leads who haven’t converted after a trial. These two are some of the must-have sequences you should be running. Here’s an example of the sequence that we use for demo no-shows.

Picking up your previous conversation with a prospect is a great icebreaker and a reason for outreach so your chances to hear back from them should be pretty high.

Double down on active prospects 

Another source of opportunities might be right there in front of you – the active sequences. You read that right! The fact that a person hasn’t yet responded to your outreach doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged. Many prospects might be reading your messages, forwarding them to other team members, clicking the links you share, or interacting with them in other ways. This clearly shows their interest (and intent). 

In this case, it would be a good idea to put in some extra effort and try to engage those active prospects using hyper-personalized messages or visual prospecting. The latter definitely works, based on both our own experience and data aggregated from our platform.

Yet it also takes some time to integrate images or video into your outreach. So using it with active prospects (especially Tier 1) would be a good choice.

For example, you can set an automation trigger to spot the active prospects in your sequences, e.g., the ones who open your email more than 5 times. Once the specified event takes place (the email is opened a set number of times), the prospect will be moved to a different sequence for further engagement. 

Taking into account that there won’t be so many prospects that match your criteria for this tailored sequence, you can do some extra research and manually customize your messages for them.

Look for intent signals

Buyer intent is my favorite tool for building laser-focused prospect lists. This is what makes your cold outreach feel warm and deliver better results – exactly what is needed to get more leads into your pipeline!

One of my favorite intent signals is team growth (hiring). Namely, we have a sequence targeting companies currently looking to grow their SDR teams offering a more cost-effective way to scale their sales operations using our product. As a result, the template might look like this:

Thanks to the targeting and personalization, this tactic delivers pretty decent results too.

Some of my favorite intent signals are:

• Company growth through acquisition, funding, or geographic expansion
• New role/company (people often look to acquire new tools in the first 90 days in the role)
• Current tool stack – complementary or competing software they are using
• Website visits, especially if a person visits your pricing page
• Social media activity – the content they share (including their comments), mutual contacts, groups, etc.

Speaking of the latter, LinkedIn is THE platform for B2B prospecting with plenty of ways to find and engage leads there. Namely, you can use it to find the relevant audience (for example, tap into a relevant group or an influencer’s followers), get some extra information about your prospects to personalize your outreach, and connect with the prospects directly using different touchpoints.

Establish thought leadership

As an introvert, I find it somewhat challenging to speak in public and share my experience with the broader audience. Yet there’s no doubt that this can offer additional leverage to expand your reach, build awareness, and generate some leads along the way.

Whether you choose to invest in social selling on LinkedIn, speak at webinars or podcasts, or share your expertise on relevant blogs and media outlets, you can rest assured that your efforts will pay off well.

After every webinar or event I speak at, I get a few inbound conversations. Similarly, Tom Slocum, one of the experts at our Sales AI Summit, further proves the point.

As long as you offer some tangible value to your audience, people will grow to consider you a trusted advisor – exactly what we should all strive for in B2B SaaS sales!

Use pattern interrupts

Aside from creative personalization, targeting, and other mentioned tactics, there are tons of unconventional ways to grab the attention of your prospects and get a few more leads for your pipeline.

Often referred to as “pattern interrupts,” these are super-creative, even risky, ways to break through the noise, for example:

• using LinkedIn voice notes or endorsing prospects’ skills as a touchpoint,
• sending blank direct messages or emails, 
• using less common channels like Whatsapp or Twitter, and
• making intentional typos in your messages.

If you don’t mind taking some risk, you could also make intentional typos or even use the wrong name in your email ????. Although it’s considered to be one of the common cold outreach mistakes, it can also help you catch the prospect’s attention. 

Most people even think that this could humanize your email, making it feel not automated. That is if you manage to turn this around, by following up with a witty apology.