We asked three sales leaders how to make your cold outbound stand out in the age of AI

Cold outbound has gotten noisier every year, and now AI is accelerating the volume even further.

What separates outbound that still works from outbound that's just adding to the noise?

Leslie Venetz

Founder - The Sales-led GTM Agency

Running diverse multi-channel sequences.

Use a minimum of three channels and utilize the depth of each channel and optimize for pattern interrupts.

For example, if you are using the phone to cold call, you also need a strategic approach to voicemails that is supported by additional touchpoints. You also need to explore texting and voice notes.

It's not enough to make 100 calls a day. You need to explore how to fully utilize each channel.

This allows you to increase your chances of earning the attention of a prospect on the channel where they are most likely to have a commercial conversation.

Collin Cadmus

Founder - Collin Cadmus, LLC.

For the last decade-plus, sales leaders have preached the importance of personalization in sales outreach.​

It worked because it was less generic than the status quo, but then it became exactly that.​

Sending a prospect an email saying, "I saw you went to school in Rhode Island," doesn't stand out anymore.​

We took something that worked because it was unique and required effort — and automated the effectiveness out of it. ​

Relevance, not personalization, works best today.

A personal detail like a prospect’s alma mater doesn't resonate as much as something relevant, like a Series A announcement or plans to triple their sales team’s headcount. ​

Relevance is the differentiator … at least until it gets automated and becomes the new norm.

Davidson Hang

Head of Business Development - Untap Your Sales Potential

For me, it starts with answering one question: "Why would this person care right now?"​

Mentioning someone’s job title or latest LinkedIn post doesn’t automatically make a message relevant.

​In my business development work, I want to understand what someone is struggling with, what they want to accomplish, and whether we can actually help. ​

Sometimes, a thoughtful recommendation or a useful perspective creates the opening.

​AI can help with preparation, but the seller still needs a resonant hypothesis to reach out.

​I’d rather have fewer quality conversations with people we can serve than fill a calendar with meetings that go nowhere.

What Today’s Winning GTM Leaders Do Differently

Watch this neat session from HubSpot's UNBOUND conference with Michael Hartman, the guy behind Anthropic's enterprise GTM across the Americas. 

He goes over what the modern revenue org actually looks like in practice, where the old playbook breaks down, and what leaders rebuilding their go-to-market motion are doing differently.