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

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does identifying "acute pain" matter when building a 20% lead list?

Because a gift lands better with a business actually experiencing the problem being solved right now. Reaching out to someone without that acute pain means the message is more likely to be ignored entirely.

How can website redesign timing reveal acute pain for a web design agency?

By using a tool like Wayback Machine to check when a dental practice last redesigned its site. If a practice typically keeps a site for 3 years and theirs is already that old, they likely need a new one now.

Why should businesses that redesigned recently be excluded from the list?

Because their message would be disregarded, they just went through the process and aren't in acute pain around the problem being solved, making outreach far less likely to resonate.

What are other measurable signals that could indicate acute pain outside of web design?

Organic search traffic, paid search performance, page speed, or Facebook followers, depending on what the agency's service actually solves. Each signal points to whether a business is likely struggling with the specific problem right now.

What's the goal of layering "acute pain" on top of the 20% lead list process?

Making sure gift-based outreach reaches businesses not just capable of affording the service, but also genuinely in need of it right now, increasing the odds the gift actually leads to a real conversation.