Gift-based Outbound: Your 20% Lead List, Part 3

    CQ

    Corey Quinn

    Founder, Deep Specialization™

    Prioritize businesses that are experiencing acute pain.

    Over the last few days, I've been sharing some techniques for Gift-based Outbound ("GBO").

    With GBO, you send high-value prospects an interesting gift in the mail as an initial sales outreach.

    GBO was a big driver of Scorpion's growth of 8x in 5 years.

    You can get part 1 here and part 2 here.

    Today, I will show you how to find the 20% of businesses in your lead list you want to target with GBO.

    Essentially, you want to isolate those businesses that are the most likely to:

    1. Be experiencing acute pain from the problem your agency solves

    2. Be able to afford your services

    Today, I'll share an example of finding acute pain.

    Let's say you design websites for dentists. Because you specialize in working with dentists, you know dentists keep their website for an average of 3 years.

    You can use a tool like Wayback Machine to see when the dental practices on your list redesigned their site last.

    Once you do, then you can:

    • Ignore the dental practices that redesigned their site two months ago--your message will be disregarded.

    • Focus on the dental practices on your list whose websites are three years old--they need a new website.

    Don't sell websites? Then, figure out what measurable criteria you can use to determine fit.

    It could be:

    • Organic search traffic

    • Paid search performance

    • Page speed

    • Facebook followers

    Or many others.

    Next week, I'll address "affording your services" for determining your 20% lead list.

    Question to ponder

    👉 What measurable signal could we use to determine acute pain in our target list?

     

    Have a great weekend!

    CQ

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    About Corey Quinn

    Founder, Deep Specialization™

    Corey helps founder-led agencies scale through Deep Specialization™ and programmatic M&A. Former CMO of Scorpion ($20M to $200M). Author of "Anyone, Not Everyone."

    “Is this a good fit for my agency?”

    I partner with founders who want to build something meaningful, not just a busier agency, but a stronger, more scalable business.

    You’re likely a strong fit if:

    • You’re generating $1M–$20M+ annually
    • You want to lead your market, not blend into it
    • You’re thinking about long-term scale, not short-term tactics
    • You want a growth engine that doesn’t rely on you
    • You value clarity over complexity
    • You’re open to advanced growth levers, including acquisitions
    Anyone Not Everyone Book Cover

    Escape Founder-Led Sales With My Free Book

    My bestselling book Anyone Not Everyone reveals the positioning and outbound system that helps founder-led agencies create predictable, scalable growth.

    Endorsed by Aaron Ross, Alan Dibb, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, and many other top thinkers in the agency world.

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