KEY OUTREACH

Hello All - We are growing and our team is expanding! If you’re interested in an Sales Development position at KEY OUTREACH on our operations team please reach out to me for details. Full time position with benefits 😃

Happy Derby 150 Week from Louisville, KY 🏇🏿🌹 Every year on the first Saturday in May for the last century and a half the world sets their eyes on my beloved hometown for “The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports” This year I’ve got a very special connection to the big race. It’s a story of that exemplifies the power of networking and showing up every day! My dear friend, Cody Caudill, is the jockeys agent for Derby jockey, Keith Asmussen. They are riding the #6 horse, JUST STEEL, for racing icon D. Wayne Lukas (4x KY Derby winner and Hall of Famer) D. Wayne Lukas. A win at 20/1 would be storybook. Let’s go JUST STEEL!

The most dynamic kick ass companies I’ve ever worked with are not the often desired Fortune 1000 companies. Rather they are small but mighty teams with a culture of TEAM and ACCOUNTABILITY. This past weekend this metaphor was on display in real time at the KHSAA Sweet 16 Tournament. For those of you familiar with my beloved home state, they know that we eat, sleep, and breathe basketball (shoutout Jack Gholke😂). Kentucky is a unique state in that our high school basketball is played in open divisions. Meaning the small schools and big schools get a chance to compete against one another to be crowned a true state champion. My wife’s Alma Mater, Lyon County, got a chance to play for the Kentucky State Championship on Saturday vs Harlan County. Little ole Lyon County is a school of around 200 kids. Simply making it to the Sweet 16 was a tremendous honor for the Lyons. But they went a run for the ages taking down Ashland Blazer (1k Students), Adair County (2.6k students), Great Crossing (1.7k students), and Harlan County (1.3k students). Lyon county took home its first state title and earned a new county line sign that will etch this team in history forever. It’s not about the size of your team or community, it’s about the heart and determination to succeed as one!

“We’ve tried cold email in the past and we had zero success” Every week I talk with dozens of agencies & SaaS companies. From founder led sales teams to enterprise sales teams with 15-20 AE’s. Those with this sentiment usually have some variance of these three things common. 1) Do not have the proper outbound email infrastructure with their IT team. Usually they are breaking the “golden rule” of outbound by sending mass emails on the companies primary domain. You’ve got to have a few dozen domains in circulation if you’re going to be sending cold email at scale. No more than 3 accounts per domain no more than 40 emails per day. 2) They offer a mryiad of different and wide ranging solutions. “Everything under the sun” our team likes to say. Usually these are agencies and they are all encompassing AOR’s. From branding & design, to PR & Social, all the way to SEO. In all reality most agencies really crush it with 1-2 of those offerings on a completely different level than the 5-10 other solutions they offer. To have success in outbound, lead with your best foot forward. This allows you to offer up your most successful solution you’ve got in your arsenal. Knock it out of the park and you’ll have every opportunity to earn and expand across the rest of their business! 3) The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) / Total Addressable Market (TAM) are too narrow. Contrary to the way we approach the offering to lead with, spreading a wide net to a variety of industries is in your best favor if you haven’t had success with outbound in the past. Often times our partners find that across the Great - Good - OK buckets of their ICP the latter two perform best. Once you’ve been able to sustain the desired number of qualified meetings then you can adjust the number industries your going after. If you fall in a the bucket of folks with a small TAM, say 1000 companies or less. Cold email will work, but it’s going to require both precision and patience. We are going for quality not quantity. Crafting the hyper personal email will never go out of style, it may just require a bump…or 20. Often times at enterprise companies within these narrow TAM’s the large variance of titles also may require some trial and error. When we brokered a six figure deal for one of our partners with Intel Corporation it required 164 different folks before we found the right person. We didn’t email all 164 at once (i.e. the entire 2nd & 3rd floor) rather we tried 10-15 folks from different departments each week across their entire organization. After 10 weeks they finally landed the meeting. A 14 month sales cycle ensued BUT it was around a $275k deal. Cold email is hard. But if you focus on addressing these 3 areas you can have success!

“We’ve tried cold email in the past and we had zero success” Every week I talk with dozens of agencies & SaaS companies. From founder led sales teams to enterprise sales teams with 15-20 AE’s. Those with this sentiment usually have some variance of these three things common. 1) Do not have the proper outbound email infrastructure with their IT team. Usually they are breaking the “golden rule” of outbound by sending mass emails on the companies primary domain. You’ve got to have a few dozen domains in circulation if you’re going to be sending cold email at scale. No more than 3 accounts per domain no more than 40 emails per day. 2) They offer a mryiad of different and wide ranging solutions. “Everything under the sun” our team likes to say. Usually these are agencies and they are all encompassing AOR’s. From branding & design, to PR & Social, all the way to SEO. In all reality most agencies really crush it with 1-2 of those offerings on a completely different level than the 5-10 other solutions they offer. To have success in outbound, lead with your best foot forward. This allows you to offer up your most successful solution you’ve got in your arsenal. Knock it out of the park and you’ll have every opportunity to earn and expand across the rest of their business! 3) The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) / Total Addressable Market (TAM) are too narrow. Contrary to the way we approach the offering to lead with, spreading a wide net to a variety of industries is in your best favor if you haven’t had success with outbound in the past. Often times our partners find that across the Great - Good - OK buckets of their ICP the latter two perform best. Once you’ve been able to sustain the desired number of qualified meetings then you can adjust the number industries your going after. If you fall in a the bucket of folks with a small TAM, say 1000 companies or less. Cold email will work, but it’s going to require both precision and patience. We are going for quality not quantity. Crafting the hyper personal email will never go out of style, it may just require a bump…or 20. Often times at enterprise companies within these narrow TAM’s the large variance of titles also may require some trial and error. When we brokered a six figure deal for one of our partners with Intel Corporation it required 164 different folks before we found the right person. We didn’t email all 164 at once (i.e. the entire 2nd & 3rd floor) rather we tried 10-15 folks from different departments each week across their entire organization. After 10 weeks they finally landed the meeting. A 14 month sales cycle ensued BUT it was around a $275k deal. Cold email is hard. But if you focus on addressing these 3 areas you can have success!

Servant Leadership: a leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. No person I have ever met in my life exemplifies Servant Leadership quite like, Derek Jackson. Over the holidays to commemorate KEY OUTREACH turning 5 we got a chance to catch up for the first time in years. The impact he’s had on my life and many others like me is immeasurable. In college working for him at Honeysuckle Labs I was introduced to an eco system of start ups that I never knew existed. Having the opportunity to work with companies like Reelio & Newark Venture Partners changed the trajectory of my entrepreneurial journey. In 2017 DJ sunset Honeysuckle to focus on being a teacher & football coach in rural West Kentucky. His calling was to impact the youth and change lives!! There was no bigger supporter of KO in its infancy than DJ. At every turn he was there to uplift and guide Kevin Markwell and I. He even went as far as taking a temporary role as our Head of Growth while we found our sea legs. As we embark on the next 5 years of this journey, we will never forget where we first set sail. Let’s crush 2024 everybody!!!

Thank you Garrett Martin, CEO of KEY OUTREACH, for being a guest speaker in ENTR 350 Entrepreneurial Creativity and Innovation at the University of Louisville today! Our students had a blast! A really inspiring story of grit, determination, vision, consistency, and honest hard work.

#TootTheHornTuesday Shouting out the KING himself today, Lorenzo G. (Butch) from our KEY OUTREACH team. Butch isn’t just a leader; he’s the epitome of a doer with a dash of genius and a sprinkle of gusto. How does this magic manifest daily? He's Geared Up: Butch is like a Swiss Army knife—always ready to slice through problems with answers, solutions, or rapid-fire responses. Plus, he has the knack for tagging me in whenever the waters get murky. He's Game: More than just being on standby, Butch would leap onto the metaphorical grenade when worlds turn. He's Gab-Savvy: Embodying Mark Borum's holy trinity of customer success: 1. Say you'll do it, 2. Do it, 3. Say you did it. Every interaction with Butch is like a mini masterclass in getting things done with a blend of brilliance and bravado. Butch, you're not just a colleague, you're the glue in our dynamic tapestry, and the daily grind is a tad more legendary with you in the vanguard. Here’s to many more triumphant tales on this odyssey of outreach!