Best Practices for Cold Outreach
- James Keblas
- Sep 3
- 2 min read
Rarely do I meet anyone who enjoys doing cold outreach to leads.
It’s awkward and risky. If you get it right, you build credibility. But if you get it wrong, you land in the same bucket as the slimy pitches you hate receiving yourself.
And yet…it’s one of the most important things you can do to keep your business growing.
That’s why in my newest podcast episode of Crossing the Axis, I invited British advertising veteran Ross MacRae to dig into the topic. For more than three decades, Ross has run BikiniLists : Find more creative clients..., a database in the UK and EU; and more recently its US counterpart, Agency Source TV. With thousands of campaigns and clients flowing through his platforms, he shares his front row seat to what works in lead generation, and what falls flat.
In this episode we cover:
TARGETING prospects into key accounts, dream clients, and everyone else.
EMAILS that put the recipient at the center of engagement.
LANDING PAGES and Loom walkthroughs as low-effort, high-value touchpoints.
JUNIORS as a door into a potential client.
TEAMWORK makes sales effective.
I know it’s a good conversation when I get schooled and walk away doing things differently.
That happened here. I came in swearing by a LinkedIn-first, email-second approach. Ross made a compelling case to flip it by starting with email, then using LinkedIn as the follow-up. Consider me converted.
Cold outreach takes time, often six months to a year before opportunities surface. Which is why waiting until you’re slow is the wrong time to start.
Always be filling the funnel with engagement at the top so that a year from now the phone is ringing with opportunities you set in motion today. The more consistent those engagements, the more calls you will get. Once the engine is running, it keeps going. But only if you keep fueling it.
Give this one a listen. You might even start to appreciate cold outreach once you see it working.
