We’re all cursed, and there’s a pile of research to prove it.
Thanks to excessive entertainment, reams of content, and a barrage of advertisements, we’re swamped with information that we struggle to process.
To determine where to aim our attention and what deserves it, our brains constantly guess what’s coming next.
When we guess right, we switch off.
This phenomenon is known as the “Curse of Knowledge”: When you encounter information that you’re familiar with—like a beaten-to-death professional title (*cough* self-described “thought leaders” *cough*), or a scripted sales message—your brain instinctively “doesn’t wanna know,” because you’ve encountered the same data before.
However, this “curse” can quickly be turned into an advantage when it comes to customer outreach. Customer outreach involves proactively engaging potential customers through various channels to build relationships and drive conversions.
By leveraging creativity and strategy, you can imbue the element of surprise (which Harvard researchers have candidly described as “crack for your brain”) into your customer outreach and lead generation tactics. What once seemed like a challenge can become a unique opportunity to connect with prospects in a more meaningful way.
To get your creative juices flowing, I’ve listed five surprising sales case studies featuring unique customer outreach ideas that could inspire your next “out-of-the-box” campaign.
1. GumGum’s custom comic “wows” a unicorn client
T-mobile is a leading cell phone service provider with over $45 billion in annual revenue and 53,000 employees. When GumGum, an AI image recognition software firm, wanted to reach decision-makers at T-mobile, they knew that traveling the beaten path of sending outbound emails wouldn’t work.
So after stumbling across the fact that T-mobile’s CEO John Legere is a huge Batman fan, they blazed their own trail by putting their personalized outreach on steroids.
Collaborating with a creative team of editors, writers, and illustrators, they developed a custom, Batman-spoof style comic book called T-Man and Gums.
After finishing the comic, 100 copies were rushed to T-Mobile and its agencies of record, and the rest, as they say, is history. Within a few hours of receiving the comic, Legere sang their praise on Twitter. And within a few days, a meeting was set and GumGum won the account.
Sales case study takeaway: Whether you’re B2B, or B2C, the fact remains that you’re still B2H—Business to Human. That’s why personalizing your lead generation around the human making decisions on the other end will almost guarantee that you earn attention.
Probably not. And that’s why this brave B2B rap video from sales veteran Jeremy Leveille is a perfect example of how to grab attention an email – earning him the attention of the accounts he was targeting.
In what’s arguably one of the gutsiest sales case studies out there, Jeremy lip-synced the song “Welcome to Atlanta” while clad in an Atlanta Hawks throwback jersey. He concludes with a quick value proposition and then shouts-out existing customers in Atlanta that the prospect would know.
The rap was a success. Not only did Jeremy impress recipients with his creative outreach, but he also received enthusiastic replies from leads that were eager to meet him:
Sales case study takeaway: With hundreds of emails flooding inboxes daily, it’s crucial to grab attention quickly—otherwise, your email might be deleted without ever being opened. While there are various methods to stand out, using videos in emails has become an especially powerful tool for capturing attention in B2B sales. And with most of your competitors relying on the standard text-based cold email or call, using video is an effective way to stand out and add a memorable touch to your outreach campaigns.
3. Dennis Oakley’s “soft” outreach earns millions in revenue
Question: You have a strong product, an understanding of your market, and a compelling value proposition. You also have no network. How do you get leads?
It’s a common predicament that many founders face. For consultant Dennis Oakley, it was a situation he successfully coached a client through.
As a startup in the B2B industrial vertical, his client grew frustrated when the phone failed to ring for two consecutive weeks. To rescue her startup from failing before it could even launch, Oakley and his team set up an aggressive outreach strategy with an unusual twist.
After identifying her ideal customer profile, which was mainly procurement managers at heavy engineering companies, Oakley and his team attended exhibitions to build a list of leads.
At the exhibitions, however, they didn’t shoot straight for the sale when meeting procurement managers and sales reps. Instead, they spoke to over 1,000 contacts and took cards from the companies that were a good fit. Or as Oakley put it “we said hello and took their business cards.”
Then, his team began an outreach campaign that focused on getting those sales reps to pass his client’s value proposition to procurement teams.
“Our first few emails were aimed not at the procurement managers but at the salesmen and getting them to forward the value proposition through to the procurement team.”
Within a year, this campaign took Oakley’s client from an unknown startup with zero business to one million dollars in sales.
Sales case study takeaway: Borrow reputation and breed familiarity.
This sales case study shows the value of finding relevant decision-makers and indirectly warming them up before you “go in for the kill.” For your next campaign, ask yourself:
Who are the ultimate decision-makers?
Is it better to be introduced by a middleman?
If so, how can you make that introduction happen?
Find your ideal customer from your CRM
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Define your ideal customer and ProspectorIQ does the heavy lifting, so you can add new contacts to your CRM and start making more sales!
4. Robin’s unconventional content generates 20% more leads
Robin, a conference room scheduling software, is no stranger to content marketing that generates inbound leads. One of their most successful sales case studies, however, came about when they experimented with their content and social selling strategy.
Steering their efforts towards social media channels where SaaS leads are harder to generate, they posted user-generated pictures of beautiful office spaces on the likes of Instagram and Pinterest.
“People might not want to look for the tech, but they love offices. They love the bars, they love the chairs, they love the lighting, it’s kind of why Pinterest and Instagram exist. So we decided, let’s highlight some of our customers,” said Ryan MacInnis, Director of Marketing at Robin.
Sales case study takeaway: To find creative ways to prospect, search for a pond your competitors are not fishing in.
If all your competitors are using identical channels and strategies to target and generate leads, be the first to experiment elsewhere. For Robin, this meant experimenting with alternate social media channels and radically different content.
5. Ash Ambirge’s “lumpy mail” gets a 100% response rate
Initially earning her the“crazy office chick” title, Ash Ambirge shares an impressive sales case study in her book, The Middle Finger Project, that eventually turned her into a top account exec.
Selling ad space for a real estate magazine called The New Home Guide, she struggled to stand out. This led to her dragging a giant contractor’s tarp filled with roofing shingles through the office and sitting down for hours to inscribe them with the words:
“You + Me = Sales through the roof.”
After mailing her customized shingles to her prospects in the home-building industry, Ambirge was elated with the results. She achieved an unprecedented 100% response rate and landed deals with nearly all the companies she targeted.
Would a cold email or call have had the same response?
Here are a few more ideas to help you stand out when conducting potential customer outreach. These might not be as uncommon as the case studies above, but they’re great for breaking away from the standard calls and emails, especially if you sprinkle in a little creativity with them.
Send a gift: A small cup, like lunch or a cup of coffee, can go a long way toward separating you from the pack and making a positive impression. You could send a gift card, have something delivered, or set up a meeting over coffee.
Expand your reach on social media: Increasing your presence on social media by posting content and joining groups on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can introduce you to lots of potential customers and help you get to know them.
Use personalization: When it comes to standing out and creating connections, personalization is key. Find out a little bit about your prospects, even things like interests and hobbies, and mention it when you reach out to them. Just make sure it comes across as friendly rather than invasive.
Offer something for free: People love free stuff, so offering something related to your product or service for free is a great way to get your foot in the door. You could offer a free sample, audit, or consulting session, for example.
Focus on omni-channel customer outreach strategies
Consider using an omni-channel approach for customer outreach, connecting with potential customers across various platforms like social media, email, and phone. This strategy helps you engage prospects where they are, multiple times, and through their preferred communication channels, keeping your brand top of mind. By delivering consistent, personalized messages and tracking customer interactions across touchpoints, you build trust and ultimately boost conversion rates.
Great sales case studies have this one thing in common…
“The Curse of Knowledge” makes earning attention more challenging, but creativity is the key to countering it and having your voice heard. As shown in the sales case studies above, professionals who are more creative clearly perform better than their less creative counterparts.
But, how do you form and execute creative marketing and sales initiatives? The answer is simple:
Be willing to experiment.
In all the sales case studies above, a team or individual was willing to experiment and fail by trialing a unique approach. If you want to revamp your lead generation campaigns, do the same.
Don’t be afraid to rock the boat.
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