Still Sending 10,000 Cold Emails? Stop. Watch This First.

Kellen Case, founder of The Deal Lab, flips the modern outbound playbook on its head. Instead of blasting 10,000 cold emails using the same basic buyer signals as everyone else, he advocates for deeply segmenting the market and finding true message-market fit. Outbound shouldn't be about immediate, desperate demand generation; it's about systematically testing hypotheses to discover what actually resonates with buyers in the real world. Case emphasizes that founders need to abandon the need for instant gratification. Real outbound success takes 6 to 12 months to build. By treating early campaigns as R&D pilots, companies can gather invaluable data—even if that data proves a certain market or channel is completely unresponsive. He also discusses applying Nassim Taleb's 'Barbell Theory' to sales, balancing low-risk, foundational activities with high-upside, experimental bets to secure sustainable revenue.

Discussed in this episode

Why relying on generic buying signals from tools like Clay leads to awful conversion rates and burned domains.
Treating outbound as a 6 to 12-month R&D motion rather than an overnight pipeline fix.
How to segment audiences beyond basic firmographics, like targeting 'discrete manufacturers with multiple locations'.
Applying Nassim Taleb's Barbell Theory to balance safe sales activities with high-risk, high-reward bets.
Using four-month pilot programs to test and validate message-market fit through specific hypotheses.
Why a complete lack of response in outbound is highly valuable data that can save months of wasted effort.
The danger of operating from a place of desperate demand where you settle for bad customers just to survive.
The enduring future of cold email as a direct, one-to-one text-based argument mechanism.

Episode highlights

0:00 — Intro and the problem with outbound
3:15 — Why demand is stupid and desperation fails
6:30 — Setting timeline expectations for success
8:45 — The Barbell Theory in sales strategy
11:20 — How to run a messaging pilot
14:10 — Going beyond standard ZoomInfo targeting
18:30 — Dealing with outbound failure and pivoting
22:45 — The future of cold email

Key takeaways

Stop relying on the same generic buying signals as everyone else.
Treat outbound as an R&D motion to find message-market fit.
Real outbound pipeline generation requires a 6 to 12-month commitment.
A lack of response is valuable data that stops wasted money.
Deeply sub-segment your market to craft highly specific outreach.

Transcript

So today's episode is with Kellen Case, who if you know anything about outbound, you know that this is the guy. And I walked into this thinking I'm going to hear the same crap, right? Go to Clay, pick the signal, the guy gets hired, and we're going to send the message of, hey Adam, because you're the CEO at such and such and you started three days ago, you get this. He flipped that shit all on its head.

None of that. Not only did he teach us about outbound, he taught us about cold calling, he talked to us about direct mail and talked about where outbound is going to be in a different way than anyone has ever told me 90 days from now. You got to wait to the end to hear that. Welcome back to the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Reimagined.

We have Kellen Case with us today, who is the founder of the Deal Lab, which is a GTM agency specializing in outbound sales and revenue strategy. No, we're not talking outbound at scale. We're not talking thousands and thousands of emails. Kellen helps businesses actually think differently and use data to optimize these outbound campaigns, which we know is something that every single fucking founder we talk to struggles with.

Let's see if we can figure out on this show how to do it right. Kellen, thanks for joining, man. Yeah, that's that's a great intro. I'm excited for this one.

I I I listen. Everyone says it. If I do nothing else good on this damn show, I can do an intro that you can take anywhere. Yeah, yeah.

Amen. Amen. I mean, I think that's that's got to be the best that I've heard. It's the reason Dale keeps me around.

Yeah, yeah, I guess so. That's the only reason why we keep him around. Kellen, so uh, so it's very interesting. Um, we talk with so many founders, so many companies that always talk about outbound, they want inbound, they don't get as much inbound.

But what are like the top three things that you hear about that people struggle with from an outbound perspective? Yeah, like I think it's like it what comes to mind immediately is like this mixture of factors. It's basically um expectations of results and like timeline alignment. You know what I mean?

And like my lens is there's sort of two different, so it's like if someone, you know, you said like, they have some inbound, they want to grow faster, right? Um, to me, it's like, okay, the job to be done there is like figure out how to make outbound work, right? It's like, you got to figure out like what is the segments that we, you know, like, how do we segment the market? What can we say to these people?

What is compelling about that, right? And solving for that is different than solving for like, how do I get my next 10 meetings, right? Right. And if right now, like if you know, you kind of have this black box of like outbound where like, how much energy in multiplies into the outcomes I need, you have no idea, right?

And so, a lot of people Well, people think they know. Right. Right. Or or they are very hope- 10,000 emails.

Just send them out. Send them, they will come. Yep. Yeah.

Well, and what's crazy is like, I mean, it's not that crazy, but it's like people think that and they definitely don't get it. You know what I mean? And even if you do, it's almost worse because if you send 10,000 emails and you get your 10 meetings and you think like, that's your now your math, it's like, you're you're operating off of like the world's worst, you know, foundation for like what's to come. Not Not to mention, your your your your conversion rates that you're deeming acceptable are actually pretty damn horrible and you're you're blowing your domains and your tam in the process by sending people a bunch of shitty messages.

Yeah. People the way I put it is like demand, like I think like demand is stupid, is basically what I've been saying lately. And what I mean by that is like, demand is like, if you're on a diet and you're starving to death, you'll eat a gas station chili dog happily. You know what I mean?

And so it's not like the, you know, demand is not like the ascendant form of helping someone, right? And in fact, so it's like demand is good because you need to know what people kind of want, right? So again, it's like this founder wants to send a bunch of messages. They want to move really fast.

They, you know, that great. That's there. But if you just appease that, the likelihood that like that demand leads to where you're trying to go, it's basically zero. You know what I mean?

It it's transactional, it's desperation. You know, another visual is like, someone who's lit on fire is not maximizing every motion to become not on fire. They're flailing because they have the demand to be not on fire anymore and it like overwrites our ability to like cognitively control ourselves and do intelligent things. I I love that visual, um, and I think that's a very good way of looking at it, and I think that's very real.

But I think what what I certainly see in founders we're working with, everyone struggles with outbound, right? Like everyone we talk to wants more pipeline and to get more pipeline, we have to do more outbound. And to get more outbound, we have to talk to more people. So let's spin up, whether it's an agency or ourself, let's go to Instantly, let's spin up 200 domains, let's go to Clay, we're going to pull in the same six signals that everyone else does.

Yeah. And send out, hey Dale, saw that you recently, you know, were on the Revenue Reimagined podcast and loved how you spoke about outbound. Uh, because you're a CEO, you must be struggling with this and I could help. It's not different anymore, right?

Like it's it's the same shit over and over again. But I find that founders are uncomfortable with experimentation, um, because they don't know if it will work. And you touched on it as well, how long, like, what are the results and what's a reasonable time frame for these results. Walk us through like, what are you seeing?

What do you need to do from an experimentation standpoint and what's the reality of how long until it works? Because generally speaking, I don't think you send an email and get a response the first time. I mean, maybe you're really good, but Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's not sometimes. Sometimes. But yeah, I so one of like one of the phrases I give people is like, I think pretty much everyone can make outbound work on a year, 12 months. Most people probably on nine months.

A lot of them at six months. Many at three. Very few at one, right? And so what I often like my discovery calls, I'm often telling people, like, you should focus on what you're willing to do for like six to 12 months, more than what is the most good in the next two months.

And if I sound really good, but you're only going to give me like a little bit of time to like squeeze out, we shouldn't do this. It's a waste of everyone's time. And so to me, like longevity always helps. I I like Nassim Taleb.

He wrote this book Anti-Fragile. It talks about barbell theory, right? And so barbell theory is like on one end, you place these low probability, high asymmetrical payoff bets, right? And that's sort of like your way of winning, you know, the most asymmetrical outcomes will come from these like low probability things that hit.

And then on the other side, you have to balance that with low risk things that essentially keep you alive, right? So it might be like, uh, you know, people who become extremely wealthy, maybe it's via the stock market. But in order to participate in the stock market, you need like a wage that you can be grounded to and that can like allow you to exist. And if you go too hard on the stock market, you might actually blow it all up, right?

And so barbell theory is like having your allocations in one or the other, not the middle. So, to me, it's like better to have the long, solve for longevity first, right? And then if, because if you have longevity, you can place lots of these little bets. You know?

And so, um, in terms of, yeah, yeah. I mean, so I think that's like how companies should look at it. The way that I tend to look at projects is like, we should do something, like a pilot would be like four months, maybe, where it's like maybe a month of setting things up, three months of doing things. And what I tell people is like, the end of that is not the best, it's probably the worst results we'll ever get when we finish that.

But what it will show is like directionality. And so we're either going like, hey, we've hit a curve where this is really working and we can kind of like pump some fuel into this, or it's kind of working and we can continue this like R&D motion, or it starts to be like, hey, this isn't looking like there's much here and we get to kind of have the conversation of like, you're probably not going to want to pay me to keep doing this for you. So let's figure out what you need to do next instead. So it could be like a smooth landing.

Um, yeah, that that's kind of how I look at it. What What happens when you get to that, I'm not sure this is really working type of conversation? Like, do you try to help them into like a different path? Like, and and what would that path be?

I mean, if they're if they're like, I got to do outbound, but that's not really working for them. Like, where do you put them? Yep. Great question.

So, the basis of our work often times, um, to like set the stage for that answer is like, with early stage companies, right? Depends on the comb. But like early stage companies, it's usually like we're looking for message market fit, right? Like, what is the phrasing against what sub-populations of our market like, will people be willing to meet with us, right?

And so, the idea there is like, we'll take the markets, right? Adam, you kind of mentioned earlier, like, everyone's talking to people the same way, right? So, a lot of our premise is literally just like, start with, what does everyone say to this market, right? So, Yeah, to that buyer.

To that buyer, yeah. Yeah, so it's like, let's say you're like going manufacturing, right? Like, if I take manufacturers and I go like, discrete manufacturing versus not alone, and then I reach out to discrete manufacturers, I'm like, hey, I'm talking to discrete manufacturing. Apollo doesn't have that.

Zoom info doesn't have that. Reps don't know that. That that one little tiny phrase will like elevate things, you know? And that's just like one layer of it.

So maybe I'll go take manufacturers, um, identify which ones are like discrete manufacturers. So now I have this like tighter list. Then maybe I'll look at which ones are like multi-location, single location, or I can't tell the amount of locations. And then I'll have these like three different sequences, basically, or like ways that I'll communicate to them.

It's like, hey, I'm reaching out to discrete manufacturers that have to move products between multiple locations to finish. You know, and again, there's like acumen and intelligence built into like the the targeting itself. It is personalized, it is relevant, but it's not like cheeseball stuff. It's based on like what, how does this actually connect to it.

Um, and so, anyways, so we come up with these like hypotheses, and then each month we like test and validate, you know, five of these, like, let's say on average, right? So, if we come to the end of a pilot, and and the conversation is like, this sucks, you, you know, we're not going to get you what you want. What it means is like, we segmented your market, you know, my really smart client and really smart us, had all of, you know, 15 ideas over three months that we ran tests, and none of them worked, right? My lens on that is like, that is extremely valuable because I've talked to that person who's on month 18 of hiring and firing agencies and reps, and this, and this, and this, and they're spinning their wheels, and we'll make traction forward even if it's just disqualifying things, right?

And so a lot of times then, you're kind of coming to this discussion of like, what is true that we thought these things could work, they're totally not, right? Is it like the market has no appetite for this? That's useful to know. Is it like email, you know, cuz a lot of times we're testing via email, it might be like, wow, we've really disqualified email as like a viable, you know, we did a supply chain operations thing before.

It's like, that's not going to be their channel. You know, um, and so, you mean, you mean everyone doesn't respond to cold email? Yeah, I know, it's crazy, right? Allegedly, allegedly.

Um, and so, you know, so when you get to the end of those things, if they don't have like the results, it's like, we had some ideas of what could work. We we hopefully, you can look at like what we did and feel very comfortable, like, yeah, I don't need to try that again because that looks like a great representation of this that I wanted to test. And then there's like, you know, and it's kind of like, what are the next hypotheses, you know? Um, and sometimes it's like, hey, you need to like call these people.

Some there's some markets that are like not that elastic to outbound in general, right? Like, I think that's another thing people don't really realize. It's like, the market exists without us and they have behaviors without us. Like, vendors aren't owed these conversations.

So you might like segment it perfectly, say a very compelling argument, that doesn't mean they're going to do anything. You know what I mean? So sometimes you just unearth like, this market is not going to trust you at face value with this idea. What do you do once you once you get to that place?

Is it like go knock on doors? Like, do we go back to like snail mail and like get in front of people? Like, if if if the outbound email's not working. Yeah.

A lot of times, why Do people open snail mail? We've done some snail mail. We have. We've done some of that stuff.

And in the right industry, it actually does work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, um, to me, the question that I ask my clients is like, it's sort of like, we need to define what a win is from that environment, right? Because again, it's like, are we looking for the next one customer to be a design partner?

Are we looking for the next 10 customers to get like a seed raise? It like, you need to cut costs to like, uh, maintain like viability and you're just feeling very emotionally defeated and like we need you know, so like, sometimes it's a product thing, right? Like, sometimes it's like, hey, look, like, the market's not excited about this, like, you're going to need to find some sort of X Cuz like, it comes back to this like, strategy versus messaging thing, you know, where it's like, you know, on one hand, maybe it's like, hey, we can host executive dinners, we can get people in a room, you might be able to get customers. But again, if what the market is saying is like, if you go cold outbound to them and you go, hey, I know this about you, we do this, and no one cares, it might actually be a false positive to use those dinners to go get those next 10 customers because you might just be sort of like incrementally dragging out the fact that like, there's no real market fit for this, you know what I mean?

Or that it's like not that palpable. So it kind of depends on like, you know, sometimes you have a tech founder that's like, I'm going to ride this thing out, you know, till the day I die. And it's like, awesome. Let's go figure out what that looks like.

Other times, people want you to be like, could you please just tell me this doesn't work so I can stop trying to do this or something like that. I think that I think that's important too, like, saying what's what's not going to work. I think anyone listening to this should send Adam like snail mail and see what he opens first, snail mail or email. I I'm totally down for it.

Um, we we all know it's going to be email because I have an ACV and I have to open it the second I get it. Yeah. Well, you'll just delete it with bubbles. Yeah.

Um, if if it looks like spam, you're right. I do just delete it. Um, I think, listen, I am not the ICP for snail mail, but I do think, and we've talked about this, Kellen, with other folks like Dale Dupri, and there's ways to stand out. Like I do think snail mail works in the right space, barring that you're not sending the same, you know, five by seven card that everyone else is sending.

Like, it's just like email. How do you stand out from the noise? If you send me the same the pressure cleaning guy that I get one from someone else every week in my email box, it's not going to work. Yeah.

Do something different, it is. Um, you've been doing this a hot minute. How'd you get into this? How how did you say, like, this is what I want to focus on?

Because I I looked at your LinkedIn, like, normally, you know, I'll say that the clay experts, if you will, it's like, oh, I've been head of outbound at nine different places or, you know, I was VP of growth and I just got tired of all the bullshit. Like, your background's not that. What made you say like, man, I want to help people do outbound? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Um, okay, so there's a number of things, right? The first thing is like, I was five years old, asked my dad, Dad, what's a job where you make a lot of money, right?

And he goes, there's one job in the world where you choose how much money you make, it's sales. And so, as a little kid, always knew it was going to be sales, right? Uh, I I dropped out of high school as a freshman, started working full-time and going to community college. I put myself through San Francisco State.

I got like my first SDR job, right? I'd been running my own like trade business. I thirted my money to get in like tech sales, super excited about it. Walked in day one, they're like, your director quit, there's no manager on the team, copy, paste this message, good luck.

Yep. No one wants to be here, right? I walked in day one, wanting to be there, knowing more than basically, And like, not really like knowing more, you know, but like, it wasn't the like, welcome to, you know, I was expecting like, welcome to the big leagues. Like, who's calling my name so I can walk out, you know, it's like, I walked in in a suit and they're like, why are you wearing this, you dork?

You know? And so, like, I walked in and it's like, oh, okay, right? And I kind of like chipped away in that job for a little while. I sold myself into a full-cycle AE job, not, you know, that paid me a bunch more, super exciting, not realizing that like, outsourced HR, small business, full-cycle AE is not going to be the most fun role in the world.

And so again, I was like, working really hard, not necessarily like, the best, and I was only like, okay, like, I don't know, I worked hard, I was fine. So then I got into a startup company, uh, during COVID, where like, I again, like, knee-capped my pay in order to go do something really exciting. And that's where I got to kind of learn about like, startups and like, kind of, uh, you know, we were like pre-product, and so I got to kind of take this idea of like, what is the idea of what we do and like, outbound that to the market and like connect it that way, you know, and that was like really fun and felt kind of like it was this like creative unlock. Um, and so it's funny though because like my background was like an account-based sales guy.

Like, I was like, I was a cold caller, I'm a, you know, I'm a communicator, I'm like a one-to-one guy, like I go, you know, do my research and stuff. I worked for Joey Gilkey for a little bit as a fractional head of sale, or like fractional VP of sales at his old revenue agency. And so I was building outbound sales teams as like an embedded consultant, and we were like, hiring and tech stack and strategy and process. And we would do this like six-month 120k, um, offer where we were like, building an outbound sales program, basically.

And what I saw doing that was like, two-thirds of the clients that would just go great if they could like if pipeline generation was like relatively straightforward. And when pipeline generation isn't straightforward, it was a nightmare because the offer we were selling maybe 1/10th of it was centric on like cold call cold email, but that could block the entire success of things, right? And so what I realized was like, oh, there's there's this there's this like opportunity to basically test and validate will pipeline generation be, you know, like super difficult or not. Before people go spend 120 grand plus higher plus tech stack, to like stand up these programs.

Right? And so day one was like, test and validate messaging. That's it. And then over time, it's expanded into being like, a little more infrastructural with teams, a little bit more like data operations, a little rev-opsy.

And like we're good at the kind of positioning stuff that it's like if we can justify the spend on some of the more like operational things, then we get to like participate in the strategy stuff in a way that like the standard cold email agency gets fired if their results aren't there right away, where we don't want to only live and die by like cold email results. We want to be helping design the system and we can just operate this like slice of it. You know what I mean? So I kind of like stumbled into it.

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If you're looking for a proven way to win and retain more customers, visit sendoso.com. It's I I I love the story about, you know, full cycle AE not not what most people think it is. Um, and HR boutique HR, like that's a tough space, man.

Like I I've been there, like they don't not only don't they want to answer phones, they don't want to answer emails and they don't have budget. And I was like 22, you know what I mean? Like 23, so I'm like a like I was like 20 years younger than anyone else on my team. I sold myself into the team as like a completely atypical hire.

Going like, I will go hard on outbound. I will be the best pipeline generator on the team. Come to find out, it's like, I'm calling like small business owners as a guy as like a kid basically in the Bay Area, and we were like a premium price, super low risk, basically, we're a great fit if you're like very low risk tolerant. And it's like, that is the op and our number one competitor, Trinett is based in the area.

And so it's like, we were just like not really the right like not the best market for the, you know, the company's Texas based, awesome company. But like, so I just found that it's kind of like, there's a lot of headwind where I had this energy, but I was like, running through something that wasn't the best conduit for like, you know, who I believed I could be if I was in the right environments. Go ahead now. And that And that Just throws back into it just throws back into circling back to what you originally said, like, you you got to make sure that you're calling the right people, you have the right definition of your ideal customer profile, the buying personas, and then differentiating your value proposition, kind of like what you're saying.

Most people are like, I am the best XYZ and the best like it's the same marketing message that everyone's saying and it just does not it'll you'll never differentiate yourself and that like why is the message work? It's like, well, you say, you sound like everybody else. So, like, how humanly can we can we differentiate you? It's difficult.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think too like a lot of like you said, like, people say like, we I am the best X, right? And that's like a declarative statement like of us.

It's kind of like, I'm this. Who cares, right? And like, I think Right. What people don't realize is like, you need to like, the market exists even if our company doesn't.

They have a way, you know, there's like patterns of thinking, patterns of behaviors that exist. There's attitudes that already exist. And like great messaging is like understands and communicating to the market where they exist, not trying to like drag them into our world. And I think that's where companies basically treat the market like it's a burden.

You know, it's like annoying that they're not just like abiding by our messaging to like come talk to us. And my lens is like, outbound is like the truth. Like if you have this idea that's so great and you go run outbound messaging and no one responds, that is more real than your belief. And if you hate that and you're mad about it and you're like, oh my, you know, blah blah blah and you're it's like, that's you, that's on you.

That's terrible leadership. You know what I mean? You should be so thankful that someone's like, oh my god, they don't care about this. We need to change things or you're dead in the water.

And a lot of, uh, yeah, it's just, you know, and that's where like a lot of weak solution providers start trying to hack things together. They're like, what thing can I do to misrepresent the truth here? Can I, you know, exploit this little micro situation that makes this person willing to talk to us that's completely irrelevant from like the competitive argument we're trying to make. You know what I mean?

And like the actual revenue contribution to that is obviously going to be terrible versus when you can go like, hey, I see the situation about you. You probably deal with things like this. Would this be interesting? And people are like, oh hell yeah, let's learn more.

I I there's so many different things. I I want to go to. Um, how do we change it? And I know that's easier said than done, but how do we change this mindset of instant gratification, right?

And I do think that that's what it is. And you touched on the way you do it, and I I love that. We also, you know, typically our engagements are four months, and we start it with an audit because the problem you think you have isn't the problem that you have, and we need to understand like, what are we trying to solve for, and we need to, you know, treat the root of the problem, not the symptom. Um, I need more meetings isn't like, it's not, okay, let's come in and book more meetings.

Um, you got to start somewhere. How do we change this mindset, and I do think it runs across very early founders who are looking for message market fit, all the way up to we're working with a hundred million dollar company that's struggling with the same problems, and it's the the same mindset. How do you change it of like, it's not instant gratification? Yeah, I think like, to me a big piece of it, it's it's like this weird thing where like, people have this need or like this pain, they're trying to solve something, but like, to me it's like trust.

Like, there's a complete lack of trust, where it's essentially like, people know they have a problem, but they're so hesitant and worried about this solution market. And like, rightfully so, because the solution market most, you know, it's like, I don't endorse most agency businesses, right? Like, you know what I mean? It's like, you wouldn't.

And and so it's like, I can't so I think the problem is like, people, you know, you're your some VP, you've had you've talked to 10 people who say they can do something. You don't believe any of them. I think they start to kind of like, generalize this stuff to themselves where it's just like, this can't be useful. You know, Um, and I think it's why, you know, I mean, and even like the solution side of the market, like, I see a lot of people purposefully injecting like, uh, anxiety and chaos, you know, they're like inflating how bad things are and they're like misrepresenting, you know, and all this stuff.

Got to get those clicks. Got to get those impressions. And so what happens is you have these people who like mind is just scrambled. They're like, I have no idea.

They're like, one guy that seems kind of reputable says like, this is God's gift to go to market. The other guy's telling me, like, if I use this, like my entire business is going to fail. They're like, I don't really know. I just want this.

Because like, what I've found is, when I'm embedded with someone and you know, it's like, give me give me three calls with someone. And by the end of that, they're like, open book, let's talk about anything. And what's hard is like, the upfront of that. And buyers are kind of trained to have this like, man, let's really vet this and let's like really you know, let's see if we can poke holes.

And that's like not how you would, you know, it's like if you're like going on a first date with someone, you're not sitting there like, where's the gotcha in the situation? You know, you're kind of like kindling this thing and you foster it and over time it grows into this thing and kind of maybe like despite some of the weaknesses, there's like these good things that can happen. And it's like if you're just looking at the world like, is there anything imperfect about this? Could anything go wrong?

Is there risk in this situation? The answer is 100% yes, every single time. And I think like the orientation towards bad things versus like winning is like really gets in people's way. You know, so it's like and that's why again, it's like I understand if you're if you're in a situation where you can't spend six months worth of this to do this, that's why it's most important is like, have a plan you're excited about that you can continue executing for some period of time to actually yield benefit out of it versus like 45 days of net new thing got, you know, every 30 days or whatever.

Yeah, and I think that's a great point. I think the challenge I think the challenge is is we as a as a community have done it to ourselves, right? Because there are bad actors, there's a lot of bad actors in the consulting agency world that are only looking for the monetary aspect of it and not for like the true result-oriented aspect of it, and I think then the buyer by definition starts getting like defensive. And so, like that trust part of it, the trust proxy that you're talking about in the beginning of that conversation is super important.

And like that was to me, you only get that through iteration over time. That's why your best customers are probably people that are, you know, brought to you, you're recommended. Like, if you're doing, if you're if you're trying to find people called out by even for your own services, it's not going to be as good as the people that are like, Kellen is like the shit and he's going to get stuff done for you and like, but he also may be totally honest with you in three months to be like, this isn't going to work and we need to like go figure out something else. And I think that honesty like, everyone wants the easy button, but the honesty is super important.

Like, at least you're going to try to make the modification and change. We end up being patterns of things that we're trying to accomplish versus like, let's try it and see if it's going to work and then if it doesn't work, like, at least now we can check off the box like, it doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I even think on the solution side, like a lot of people even like solution providers often like orient like if you're like lead gen agency, you're like, we'll get you 10 to 20 meetings, right?

Well, let's say like you run your thing and you get three meetings, right? Like one lens on that is like, we didn't hit the goal, right? But the truth is, that founder probably needs help more than the person who you walk in and you hit 20. And the problem is the solution market doesn't want to work with the person who only gets three because they think they're not worth it.

We, you know, and maybe they're not. The the founders in those situations who know they kind of have like a little bit of a dicey situation are the ones that are like, we're looking for guarantees and we're and it's like, what are you talking about? Like, there's there's exactly there's definitely no guarantee of anything in this situation. There's no guarantee for anyone in this situation.

We we get that almost every engagement, Kellen. The first question is, so we're going to spend X on you. What's the exact ROI we're going to get and how much more revenue are we going to close if we work with you? Yeah.

I don't fucking know. Like. Yeah. We had a we had a we had a um we had a CTO, CEO, uh CRO talk to us and we said, you know, first thing we do, we do a go-to-market audit so we can figure out like really where the challenges are.

And the the exact response was, well, what if your audit's shit? And I'm like, okay, well, Yeah. That's what I mean. Is like, to me, I mean, like quite literally, that's like, it's like, hey, man, if that's how you look at the stuff, we definitely shouldn't work together.

Because like, it We're not the right fit for you. Yeah. Just I no one's the right fit for that person. Like you will never ever ever ever Cuz like, it to, you know, I one of the the phrasing I use with people is like, you know, you get through the proposal stuff and people are like, you know, should I do this, right?

And and it's like, my lens is, if you're excited to spend the money to learn whatever we're going to learn, this will be a home run. You're going to get to the end of this. This will be so awesome. If I sound really good talking about this stuff and you're hearing like, I really think this is going to work and you'd be totally pissed if we get no results at the end of this, don't do it.

Because that's 100% a possible outcome. And I don't I'm more concerned about having like detractors on the back end of it than like acquiring the next customer. You know what I mean? to you guys' point like, there's not there you know, there's extreme demand for this type of stuff.

So there's like no shortage of like people who, you know, want some type of help. I think people just also have issues with like scope definition, right? Like you're like, you're helping the GTM org, and to them that just inherently means like revenue ROI, right? But when again, like there's, you know, like that revenue is the uh, outcome of lots of little bits of things working really well, you know, and if you're not willing to kind of go like, well, let's make this work well and then let's get this working well and we'll kind of layer these together.

If it's just all or nothing, light switch stuff, and you're a budget buyer, it's like you're not going to get that. That just doesn't exist. That's so is so true. I mean, the way people should be thinking about these things is that this is evolution and not you're going to like, you're not going to fix it in one piece.

Like and the the challenge is a lot of people, they're so broken. That's why we built out like four phases. Like, we think about how do we stabilize like the chaos that's happening within the current state. Like, there there's a reason why things aren't working.

Like, and a lot of times it's not super obvious. It's not like, this is the problem. It's like, okay, once we go through all the conversations and figure that out, now we can actually figure out what the problems are, and now we can solve the root problem versus some branch of some problem you think it is. So, um, anyway, um, Kellen, what's the future of outbound?

In like two minutes or less, like, is email going away? Is it going to have to be, you know, cold calling? Like, where where is outbound going? Yeah, I think it's not going away.

Like, I I I could see it maybe getting more expensive basically, but like like more expensive to cut through. But I think and you know, Google raising their prices and stuff. The utility of like a random email address sending you something who you've never talked to is extremely high. Like, that's probably I don't think that'll ever go away.

You know, you sign up for a newsletter, they're sending you a cold email, right? You get an introduction to someone, that's a cold email. You go on someone's website, it says email us for help, cold email, right? Like, all so cold email's going to exist.

Um, I I think, you know, maybe like maybe like human's behaviorally go to like other inboxes or something. But I think like the idea, like the mechanism of like individual targeting with text arguments is like forever. So my lens is like, you know, if your value is only deliverability, that sucks because that's like low value. But if you have like kind of targeting and messaging strategy, like you'll transcend whatever comes in the future.

I like it. That's a that's a good point. I love it. Kellen, thank you so much for joining the show.

Where uh where can people find you? Obviously LinkedIn, but where can they find more about your company and how do they engage with you, man? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, LinkedIn's the best.

Definitely. Like, especially if anyone has questions, curiosities, hit me up there. Thedeallab.com is like the website.

It's it's pretty basic. It's like it's decent. It has what we do. Um, most mostly we're working with people early stage who want to like test, validate, outbound messaging.

Sometimes we're doing like bespoke data sets and stuff like that. Cool tam buildout. Um, and then the third one is just like, kind of, you know, we're we're like a clay expert agency and like a Spark Lead agency. So if people want to do any of the sort of like embedded clay motions, we support that as well.

Like a clay agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite. No.

Kellen, thanks so much for joining the show, man. I appreciate it. Thank you guys. It was a lot of fun.

Appreciate it. Cheers.