#29 — Cold Take: Sales prospecting is an engineering problem
September 10, 2024•2 min read
Our take: Prospecting isn't just a sales task - it's an engineering problem that technical founders can solve with automated pipelines instead of traditional SDR teams.
The big picture: Traditional sales development relies on manual labor (what we affectionately call the SDR “body shop” model), but forward-thinking startups are now building software pipelines that scale more efficiently than hiring armies of SDRs.
How it works today: After finding initial product-market fit, founders typically:
- Hire an experienced seller in their domain
- Build out a team of SDRs to generate meetings through manual research and outreach
- Scale linearly by adding more SDRs
The shift: Prospecting is becoming an engineering challenge that can be solved with four key tools:
- Reverse IP lookup (Koala, RB2B) to identify website visitors
- Email automation tools (Apollo) for campaign management
- Text generation (ChatGPT) for personalized outreach
- Integration platforms (Clay, Zapier) to connect everything
By the numbers: The traditional approach is inefficient:
- Average readers spend just 26 seconds on articles
- People receive 70-400 notifications daily
- Manual prospecting requires laboriously researching each lead individually
The automation advantage: Modern prospecting pipelines can:
- Instantly identify website visitors
- Automatically enrich contact data
- Generate personalized outreach at scale
- Run continuously without manual intervention
What's next: The SDR role will evolve from manual prospecting to pipeline management:
- Technical skills become more valuable
- Process and product mindset is essential
- Copywriting remains critical for templates
The bottom line: Founders should build cross-functional teams with both sales expertise and systems thinking. This shift will invert decades-long beliefs about selling, allowing companies to grow faster and more efficiently.
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