What to focus on as you’re restarting your prospecting in 2026

In today’s newsletter, I’ll share what you should be focusing on as you restart your prospecting in 2026. If you took some time off (I did), you most likely stopped sending prospecting messages to your prospects, and restarting can be a struggle.

The struggle is even harder in 2026, as outbound has continued its crazy transformation with AI agents, spam folder, and cold calling restrictions. It’s never been so hard to book meetings, but the basics still apply.

Here are 3 steps you can follow to get more conversations started.

Step 1: Optimize for open rate and connection requests

Most salespeople have the wrong expectations when it comes to prospecting. They think they can send a few emails here and there, and they’ll be able to book meetings quickly. That cannot be farther from the truth, especially when you stopped reaching out for a few weeks.

When restarting your prospecting, the most important is to focus on leading indicators of success. Here are two you can’t ignore:

• Email Open Rate: This indicator shows how your domain is performing, and the quality of your subject line. If it’s low, you may have an issue with your domain (check Maildoso to fix it), or your subject lines suck (fix it here).
• Connection Requests Acceptance Rate: When working with LinkedIn, the first thing to focus on is your connection requests. If your requests aren’t accepted, you won’t be able to keep prospecting that person on LinkedIn. You can fix your connection requests here.

Run your sequence for 2 weeks to get enough data before moving on to step 2.

Step 2: Optimize for replies

When your email open rates and LinkedIn connection requests acceptance rate are at an acceptable level, you know your prospecting does its first job: get the attention of your prospects.

But attention isn’t enough to book meetings, you need to get replies. Most salespeople write their prospecting messages with the goal of booking a meeting, or closing a deal. That’s the biggest mistake I keep seeing, customer after customer.

You can fix this by working on your messaging, and making it intriguing so people reply to learn more. I call that The Netflix Effect, and your goal is to get prospects to reply to solve a specific problem, with a specific solution. Go check my Prospecting Template Swipe File if you want concrete examples.

Run your updated sequence for 2 weeks to get enough data before moving on to step 3.

Step 3: Optimize for meetings

When your sequence generates replies, you’ve done the hardest part. Now you can start working on turning these replies into meetings. Unlike what most people think, meetings aren’t booked in your prospecting messages, but in the conversations you’re running.

You need to navigate the conversation to turn it into a meeting. Here’s how it’s done:

• Step 1: Use a problem question
• Step 2: Tease a reciprocity resource
• Step 3: Ask for feedback
• Step 4: Use a negative-reversing question
• Step 5: Drop a meeting link

You can check my detailed guide to get more details on turning replies into meetings.

And these are the 3 steps I recommend you follow as you’re restarting your prospecting in 2026. Keep in mind that your month of January won’t be representative of the rest of 2026, as you’re ramping up your prospecting.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris