Many B2B consultants resort to automation tools to facilitate outreach at scale.
We fall for the promises of automation SaaS companies preaching that sales will cascade from heaven with the help of their little bot or monthly subscription.
In my experience over the past two and a half years of experimenting with a range of LinkedIn and cold email outreach tools and methods, is that for a high ticket consulting or agency offers, NOTHING beats a human being.
But as the founder/ owner of your company, you cannot spend 40 hrs a week prospecting, researching, messaging, and responding to messages.
So what is the solution?
What automation can do:
✅ Create AI-generated personalized email lines
✅ Clean email lists
✅ Send templated emails to a list
✅ Like and comment on posts.
✅ Send LinkedIn connections and messages.
✅ Trigger workflows such as sending automated email sequences after call bookings or logging leads into your CRM or database
What automation CAN NOT do:
⭕ Research leads and create lists
⭕ Research deeply personalized lines for leads
⭕ Navigate internal relationships of a corporate structure
⭕ Set up and send email campaigns
⭕ Reply to emails
⭕ Set up and send Linkedin campaigns
⭕ Reply to LinkedIn messages
⭕ Book calls
⭕ Follow-up leads
Automation can do parts of this workflow but not combine them.
You’re left to handle still and manage the software stack and respond to messages with creativity, intuition, and intelligence.
Tools add up too. Automation tools can easily cost $49-$99 a month [from cheaper to more expensive], and combing a few, such as LinkedIn outreach plus personalization software, can quickly become a $200-$400 per month investment.
And you still need a human to assemble them and handle the workflow.
I have discovered that for a high ticket B2B consulting or agency offer [$5k per client or more] that hiring and appointing a VA is a much more time and cost-effective endeavour.
A trained VA will cost about $500 a month and can do all of the above [with or without the help of automation].
They can handle the required human elements, such as researching, personalizing, replying with intuition and intelligence, and integrating all the workflow pieces sequentially and sensibly.
All while making your prospects feel they are not talking to a bot.
And freeing you up to work on the more essential parts of your business - strategy, growth, client engagement, content creation, and more.
If you’d like to discuss hiring and appointing a VA for your B2B outreach and appointment setting, comment below or DM me on LinkedIn, and we can chat.
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