Outbound
Automate outbound sales end to end
ICP to sequencer the same day. Waterfall, one AI sentence, warmed variant domains.
The loop
- 01Write the ICP before opening ClayFirmographics + seniority + one timing signal. If it matches >50k companies, narrow.
- 02Prototype on 200–500 rowsFind Companies, then scale. Fixing logic at 5,000 rows is too late.
- 03Enrich company and contact in parallelMulti-provider email waterfall. Pay for the first hit. 85–95% vs 60–75% single-provider.
- 04One AI sentence, not an AI emailMission or job-post opener. Read 20 rows. Cap 20–30/inbox/day on warmed variants.
- 05Three gates before launchValid email (not catch-all), warmed variant domain, 20-row copy review.
Outbound that still starts in a spreadsheet is a headcount problem dressed up as a process. Clay’s guide is a single pipeline: define who you target, find them, enrich company and contact together, write one specific sentence from the row, then — and only then — touch Instantly, Smartlead, or Clay’s sequencer. The rep still picks up the phone. They just stop building lists.
The expensive mistake is enriching the wrong people. Write firmographics, seniority, and one timing signal before you open Clay; if the filters describe more than 50,000 companies, narrow. Prototype on 200–500 rows. Staggering company and contact enrichment doubles latency for no reason. Measure positive reply rate, not opens: below 1% something is broken; 1–3% is a foundation; above 3% you scale one variable at a time.
