I’ve been in sales since I’m 15 years old. I started selling airplane cleaning services, tried to get a startup afloat in Canada, and then transitioned into tech sales in 2015.

Through all these years, I’ve noticed one thing.

Most prospects I contacted didn’t reply to my outreach.

The best I got was a 38% reply rate (that’s how you can get it too). But even though most people don’t reply, it’s OK.

It’s not because they don’t reply that they aren’t acting on what you sent them.

Here’s a great example:

I got invited last week to share my outreach system on a webinar with Andrei Zinkevich. We had over 100 participants showing up, and I recognized a few people I had been reaching out to.

During the live Q&A, one of them asked me about my follow-up structure. After answering, I asked him why he didn’t reply to my outreach.

Here’s what he said:

“I was just really busy with other priorities. But I really like your stuff, I’m promoting it with the team, and I’m even considering bringing you in for a training.”

This prospect had never replied, but he was already considering working with me.

And this has a name.

It’s called the Dark Funnel. In short, it’s all the actions prospects are taking without you knowing about them.

Think about the emails and links you send them. They are sometimes shared on Slack, in private communities, or people even chat about them in meetings.

Think about the referrals people are giving. All these actions are almost impossible to track, but they are all contributing to getting you known by your prospects and the people they interact with.

And that’s why you sometimes get meetings and opportunities appearing out of nowhere.

So next time you get frustrated because you don’t get replies, keep that in mind.

It’s not because you don’t see it that it doesn’t exist.

I’m a super lazy guy.

My mom was always getting angry at me when I was a kid because I was too lazy to tidy my room (she still gets annoyed at me for that when I go and visit her).

Yet, with time, I have learned to build procedures and habits to get things done, with the least amount of effort possible.

And prospecting is one area of my life where procedures have allowed me to overcome my natural tendency to procrastinate.

Every single weekday, I go to my office, I prepare a coffee, I open my computer, and I do 3 things:

Follow up —> Find new prospects –> Contact new prospects

Step 1: Follow up

Following up is a key ingredient in successful prospecting. It’s also the simplest task in cold outreach.

If you don’t have a follow-up sequence, you’re going to burn through tons of leads and get no replies.

That’s why I start my prospecting routine by following up on all prospects who didn’t reply to my previous touchpoints. I use a spreadsheet to keep track of who I got in touch with and when. You can use a sequencer or a CRM, I just didn’t find one that wasn’t email-centric.

When all my follow-ups are done, I take my first coffee sip (it forces me to get done quickly with the follow-up, as I’m not a fan of cold coffee).

Step 2: Find at least 5 new prospects

Next, I find 5 new prospects who fit with my ICP. I calculated that number using my “Cruising Altitude Calculator” (you can access it in my latest course).

I know that I need to add 5 new prospects to my sequence every single weekday to reach my meeting target.

In general, I check who viewed my LinkedIn profile, who liked/commented on my posts, and if I cannot find enough leads, I’ll go and check the latest post of a sales thought leader.

If the post is about something I can help with (how to write a good connection request, for example), I’ll check who liked/commented and save prospects who fit with my ICP in my spreadsheet.

Step 3: Enroll 5 new prospects into my sequence

Now that I have 5 fresh prospects, I need to contact them.

Luckily, I always have something relevant to say. They either checked my profile, liked or commented on my post, or engaged with someone else’s post.

I use this as a trigger to start the conversation. It looks like that:

If I’m not connected with them, I send that as a connection request. If I’m already connected, I drop a quick prospecting video.

So how much time does it take?

It’s pretty fast. I have never spent more than one hour per day prospecting, but the average is around 30 minutes. Here’s a typical schedule:

• 08:00 to 08:10: follow up
• 08:10 to 08:20: find prospects
• 08:20 to 08:30: contact prospects