Outbound lead generation: the process from list to meeting.

Outbound vs inbound lead generation

Outbound lead generation means you choose the companies and people who fit your market and contact them first, before they have heard of you. Nobody asked for your message, so it has to earn the reply. In B2B it usually runs as a list, a first touch on LinkedIn or email, a few follow‑ups, and a meeting for the people who say yes.

Inbound lead generation runs the other way. Buyers find you through search, an article, a referral or an ad, then leave their details or ask for a call. They come with the problem already in mind, but you choose nothing about who they are or when they arrive.

Most teams run both, and the line between them is thinner than it looks. When someone you wrote to last week comes back to your pricing page, that is inbound interest, and the right answer is an outbound one: a short, timely note from the person who wrote before, about the problem that page answers. Side by side, the two compare like this.

In GetSales, the links you send carry a short code, so Signals shows which company you wrote to came back and the pages it opened.

Build the ICP from the deals you won

An ideal customer profile describes the companies that buy from you and the person at each who makes the call. Keep it narrow enough that one first line could fit everyone on the list. If you need three different pitches, you have three profiles, each with its own list and its own sequence, and when a segment does not answer, you know which one it was.

Write it from your last ten or twenty closed deals, not from the market you hope to win, and look past their size to what those companies had in common the month before they bought. Write down four things:

• The company: industry, headcount band, region, and one visible sign of the need, such as a growing team of the people you sell to
• The person: the title that owns the problem, the seniority, and the team they sit in
• The timing: what tends to change at a company in the months before it buys
• The exclusions: customers, open deals, competitors, partners and anyone who asked not to hear from you

In GetSales, you describe the profile in one sentence, typed or said, and AI Search turns it into filters you can read. A word it cannot match is named, not guessed.

Build an enriched, verified list

The list is the profile turned into names: the companies that match, the people at each who fit the role, a work email for each and one fact worth opening with. Whether you buy it, export it or build it by hand, the checks are the same.

Verification matters more than it looks. Bounces count against the mailbox that sent them, and a few bad lists can push a domain into spam for everyone on your team. The CRM check matters too: a customer who gets a cold pitch, or a prospect who hears from two of your reps in one week, remembers it.

People change jobs often, so build the list close to the day you write, and score it before the first send, with a reason beside each score, so the weak fits wait instead of hearing from you. The full pass, in order:

1. Pull the companies that match the profile.
2. Find the people at each company who own the problem.
3. Find each person's work email and verify it.
4. Check everyone against your customers, open deals and do-not-contact list.
5. Score each person's fit and note the one fact the first line will use.

In GetSales, a table finds each work email finder by finder and checks it with the verifier you pick, an AI column scores the fit and keeps its reasoning, and a person already in any table of your workspace is not added again.

Pick the moment with trigger events

The same message reads differently a week after someone starts a new job than in a quiet month. A trigger is a change that gives you a reason to write now: a new role, a promotion, a post about the problem you solve, a hiring push, a funding round, or a second visit to your site from someone you contacted.

Use the trigger to pick the moment, never as the opening line. 'I saw you were on our pricing page' tells the person they were watched. A note about the problem that page answers, sent the same day, does the work without that.

Triggers also tell you when to stop. Someone who changes jobs halfway through a sequence should not get the next email at the old address. Take them out, and if the new company fits, start again there.

In GetSales, Signals watches the site visits, new posts and job changes of the people you write to, and a play you switch on once answers each one or asks you first. Funding and hiring news come from other tools.

Choose the channels, honestly

Two channels beat one when they read as one conversation. An email a few days after a connection request, written as a follow‑up from the same person, feels like one person reaching out twice. Two tools that know nothing of each other feel like two strangers.

Email has rules. In the US a cold B2B email is commercial email under CAN-SPAM: it needs a true sender and subject line, a clear note that it is an ad, your postal address, and an opt-out you honor within 10 business days (FTC, CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide, August 2023). Gmail asks every sender for SPF or DKIM and a spam rate under 0.3% (Google's sender guidelines, in force since February 2024).

Know what your tools cover. GetSales runs LinkedIn and email. It has no phone finder and no dialer, and it buys no ads and sends no mail, so keep those tools beside it if your buyers answer there. Pick by where your buyers actually answer, not by what a tool happens to support. What each channel is for:

• Email: the widest reach and the cheapest touch. It needs a verified address, a mailbox with a history of normal mail, and a domain with its records set.
• LinkedIn: a connection request with a short note, then a message once they accept. The buyer sees your profile and your history, so it has to look like someone who knows the field.
• Phone: the shortest path to a live conversation with some buyers, and the hardest to scale. It needs good numbers and a dialer.
• Ads and direct mail: they warm an account up, but they rarely start a conversation by themselves.

In GetSales, when someone you write to opens a key page such as pricing on a site switched to People, their open thread gets a task to call them while they are still looking.

Run one sequence across LinkedIn and email

A sequence is the set of touches each person goes through until they reply or the steps run out. A common B2B shape: a connection request with a short note, a LinkedIn message to the people who accept, an email to the rest a few days later, then a follow‑up or two on each path.

Every follow‑up needs a new reason to answer: a short example from a similar company, a question, a different angle on the problem. A line that only bumps the last message is a reminder, and reminders get ignored. Space the touches three to five days apart.

Send from real people's own accounts and mailboxes, inside working hours where the buyer is, at a pace each account can hold. Decide before the first send what a reply does: on either channel, it should stop every step still to come for that person. Three messages to start from, the blanks yours to fill:

In GetSales, one workflow holds both channels: LinkedIn steps go out from each sender profile's own account and emails from its mailboxes, paced within each account's limits, and by default a reply pauses that person's steps.

Qualify the replies and book the meeting

Keep the whole conversation in one place. Someone who accepted on LinkedIn, got an email and answered it needs one thread with both channels, so whoever replies sees everything that was said.

When someone names a time, confirm it in your own words and send the invite yourself. In GetSales a lead who names a time comes to you as a task, and a Do not contact reply puts the person on your stoplist.

Replies come in a few kinds, and each needs its own answer. Sort every one the day it lands, since a warm reply that waits two days often goes cold:

• Interested: answer what they asked, then offer one next step, such as 15 minutes and your booking link.
• Wants more: send the one thing they asked for, keep it short, and ask one question back.
• Not now: ask when to come back, and put the date in your calendar.
• Wrong person: thank them, and write to the person they name, saying who sent you.
• Out of office: hold the sequence until they are back.
• Do not contact: stop at once, and add them to your do-not-contact list for good.

In GetSales, every reply lands in Unibox with a label and its reason, and the AI SDR drafts the answer and offers your booking link after a yes. Each scenario sets whether it sends on its own or waits for your OK.

From one sentence to a running campaign

Done by hand, these steps run across a list tool, an email finder, a verifier, a sequencer and an inbox, and much of the work is moving the same people from one tool to the next. The parts worth keeping human are small: the profile, the reason to write, and the answer to a reply.

In GetSales, Creator takes the legwork from one sentence. Say or type who you sell to, and before anything is built it lays the work out as a plan you read. Running the plan builds every row at once: the search starts collecting, the columns wait for people to land, and the workflow stays a draft until your yes. The plan's rows:

1. The search that builds the list, from your words.
2. The columns that check each person's fit.
3. Work emails and first lines for the people who pass.
4. The workflow, with each step and its text.
5. The AI SDR's context for your table.

Everything Creator builds, from the table to the workflow, is an ordinary part of GetSales you can change by hand.