B2B Telecom Sales Tactics for 2024

The AI dialers and data vendors will tell you to buy more mobile phone numbers to increase your success factors for your calling strategies - both reach and dial to meeting efficiency... Makes sense, right? Since Covid and a rapid change to WFH, the thought leaders have preached the "mobile-first" gospel—suggesting that getting a prospect’s mobile number is the golden ticket to setting meetings. But what if I told you that millions of real-world sales conversations say otherwise? Our latest data from ConnectAndSell’s vast B2B conversation network (Jan 2024 – present) reveals a truth that will ruffle some feathers: 🚨 Mobile-first outreach is overrated. 🚨 👉 Calling a prospect’s direct work line or even their company HQ number results in a higher meeting conversion rate than calling their mobile. That’s right. The numbers don’t lie. 💡 The Hard Data: 📉 Mobile conversions have nosedived from 7.2% in Jan 2024 to just 4.2% in Feb 2025—a 41.7% decline. 📈 Direct and Company lines are holding steady, averaging between 5.0% and 6.4%. The cost of clinging to mobile-first? 💰 $450M/£354M in lost revenue across a 1M dial sample size due to misprioritized outreach efforts. Why? 📞 Relevance & Context – Prospects answering their work numbers are already in a business mindset. Mobile? They could be anywhere, doing anything. 🏢 Company-Supported Access – Work numbers exist to enable conversations, not to avoid them. ⏳ Decision-Maker Dynamics – Direct and company numbers drive higher intent conversations because they are expected channels for business. The takeaway? Stop chasing mobile numbers like they’re the holy grail. Instead, double down on a diversified phone strategy that maximizes both reach and meeting conversion. Curious to see the full breakdown? Let’s talk. 🚀

"Deal's looking good. I'm in with the CMO." A colleague shared his excitement. I rolled my little eyeballs. "What?" he asked, confused. "Single-threaded deals die," I replied. Three weeks later: "CMO went on leave. Deal's stalled." I wasn't surprised. The average B2B purchase now involves 11+ stakeholders. Yet most reps are still playing the "one relationship" game. Old playbook: Find one champion. Let them "sell internally" for you. Hope for the best. Failure rate? About 80%. A recent client win taught me the better approach: Initial call with the VP of Sales. Great fit, but I asked: "Who else needs to be comfortable with this decision?" The list: - CRO (economic buyer) - IT Director (technical approval) - Sales Enablement (implementation) - 2 Regional VPs (end users) That's 6 people. Each with different: - Priorities - Objections - Questions Rather than pestering my champion to coordinate everything... I created a single digital room with: - Role-specific sections for each stakeholder - Tailored ROI calculations for the CRO - Security documentation for IT - Implementation timeline for Enablement - Quick-start guides for the Regional VPs My champion shared the link. The magic happened silently: Analytics showed the CRO viewed the ROI calculator 5 times. The IT Director spent 15 minutes on security docs. Both Regional VPs watched the training videos. I hadn't spoken to any of them directly. But they were all selling themselves. When we finally had the "decision call," everyone was already aligned. No last-minute objections. No mysterious "other stakeholders." No surprises. Here's what changed: Old approach: Pray your champion effectively represents you to people you never meet. New approach: Give every stakeholder what they need, even without direct access. Multi-threading isn't about scheduling more calls. It's about making yourself irrelevant to the process. The best deals close when stakeholders convince themselves...without you in the room. Are you still gambling on single-threaded relationships? Or building networks that sell for you? Agree?

Sales teams handling negotiations in the fiercely competitive B2B SaaS space face greater complexity than ever. They have to navigate making deals with larger buying committees, tighter budgets, and a sharper focus on ROI. But ask any sales professional, and they will tell you how a great many deals that materialize tend to underwhelm and underperform.   Successful negotiations are no longer the result of great communication skills alone. They need to drive lasting value. The defensive mindset focused on a transactional, even adversarial, style of negotiations no longer has an impact. The focus of sales teams is therefore shifting more towards building trust and being seen as a reliable strategic partner and problem solver.   These are four vital shifts that I believe would help flip the script for better negotiation outcomes:   ✅ Hyper-personalize Using Data  The perception of risk in buyers is higher today, and negotiators must offer more flexibility and customization opportunities to bring that down. One way is to tailor demos and proposals to the specific, nuanced needs to reduce the sense of risk. Another is to arm yourself with data and approach the negotiating table, better prepared than ever and less committed to a fixed position. This helps better align priorities, surface options, test ideas, and respond with business plans and alternatives rather than concession requests. Decision-makers are presented with a full set of viable options to choose and approve from.   ✅ Build Ongoing Engagement Relying on early consensus with stakeholders is often a lengthy process. It also creates a false sense of security that is broken when a new stakeholder gets involved. Internal friction is often a bigger deal-killer than the competitor's price. Instead, developing continuous stakeholder engagement helps anticipate friction points and unearth differences in priority, quickly.   ✅ Pick Your Battles Strategically Rather than getting bogged down on low-impact issues simply because they are on a standard checklist, aim for strategic leverage. This is better achieved by choosing the deals and specific issues that are actually worth the stakeholder goodwill and time invested. Identify your ‘must-haves’ versus ‘trade-offs’ early.    ✅ Shift Focus from Closing to Collaboration The most successful deals aren’t linear but co-designed. Instead of presenting a static proposal, involve the buyer in the solution-building process. Ask questions like, "If we adjusted this variable, how would it affect your internal rollout?" This approach turns the buyer into an internal champion as they helped build the deal. When the customer feels ownership of the solution, the negotiation stops being a tug-of-war.   When the negotiation process feels like a constant hurdle race, it’s time to rethink our approach with some essential shifts. I’d love to hear your best practices for stronger negotiation outcomes in the comments.

If your plan is to drive more opportunities in Q2 by relying on targeted, personalized outbound / ABM, you’re likely in for a shock when you see a significant lack of pipeline come august. Right now in B2B, especially tech, it’s perhaps the hardest time I’ve ever seen to get a prospect’s attention “But jeff, so many LinkedIn influencers talk about how personalization is the key to sales right now!” Wrong 🚫 Why is that? A few reasons, based on many convos I’ve had with exec revenue leaders (and reps doing the selling) + my observing of our ecosystem this past year + being on the receiving end of many sales efforts: 1) the volume of outbound right now has reached a fever pitch. On Monday alone I got 17! Outbound touches via email and LinkedIn, for solutions I’ve never even spoken to them about. Too much noise. 2) buyers are becoming immune to the lazy “personalization” and starting to see through it. Starting your email by referencing one thing about them that’s public on LinkedIn (such as their city) and then going into a canned pitch is not genuine personalization and screams “spam”. 3) surface level personalization (above) also does not address the main thing buyers want to see…which is how their need is solved. They don’t care if you know they’re a Bears fan…they care if you can improve the team’s NRR in Q3. 4) lazy, undertrained, or inexperienced reps overindex on personalization and focus on that instead of proper discovery. They think the job is to personalize the outreach, instead of understand the problem and then personalize the SOLUTION. Creating bad habits and bad results. So with all this in mind, can you still do effective outbound, and make it personalized? Of course. It’s just going to be much harder and take much longer to get the aggregate results then you might have expected. 💡And as a result, a better path towards pipeline generation in 2024 is through authority. Invest time on LinkedIn showcasing your point of view as a thought leader. Invite prospects to IRL events where you can have real conversations. Leverage your relationships for referrals. And do outbound, but care a little less about personalization and more about teaching then something right out of the gate. That’s 1000% the path of least resistance to sustainable pipeline growth.

Here's why most discovery calls FAIL… It's not what you ASK. It's what you QUANTIFY. "What challenges are you facing?" = 20% close rate "What are the ripple effects on the business when your team misses revenue targets by 20%?” = 80% close rate Do the math. One approach leaves you with DEAD deals. The other puts MONEY in your pocket. I've run 10,000+ discovery calls and here's what I’ve found: Most reps are allergic to quantifying pain. They ask surface-level questions. They accept vague answers. They fail to go DEEP. Here's my battle-tested formula to 3X your discovery call effectiveness: 1️⃣SEEK PAIN FIRST Humans are driven by pain or pleasure. Guess which drives more action? Pain wins. Every. Single. Time. 2️⃣GO 10 LEVELS DEEP Don't accept the first answer. Use follow-ups like: "Can you give me a specific example?" "How exactly did that affect your team?" "Tell me more about that..." You're peeling an onion. Each layer reveals MORE PAIN. 3️⃣QUANTIFY EVERYTHING "This is frustrating" = weak "This is costing us $250K monthly" = POWERFUL When it's THEIR numbers, it becomes REAL. 4️⃣TRIGGER EMOTIONS B2B is still H2H (human to human). "How has this made you feel personally?" "What was your boss's reaction when this happened?" Emotions drive decisions. Logic justifies them. 5️⃣EXPAND THE IMPACT Most prospects haven't considered the FULL cost of inaction. Ask: "What happens if a year passes and this problem remains?" Their answer will terrify them more than you ever could. 6️⃣MULTI-THREAD THE PAIN "Who else is affected by this problem?" "How is your team's performance measured on this?" Pain that affects MULTIPLE stakeholders creates URGENT deals. 7️⃣DON'T PITCH (YET) The moment you uncover serious pain, you'll want to pitch. RESIST. KEEP DIGGING. The deeper they feel understood, the less you'll need to sell later. 8️⃣USE A DELIBERATE SEQUENCE Random questions = random results. Strategic sequence = predictable urgency. Here's my exact pain sequence that's closed $15M+ in deals: "How long have you been dealing with this?" "What have you tried so far?" "Why hasn't it worked?" "What metric is most impacted?" "Where is it now vs. where you need it to be?" "How has this affected YOU personally?" "Who else is feeling this pain?" "What happens if this continues for another year?" This isn't theory. This is 15 years of trench warfare from selling SMB through the Enterprise. When I switched from asking WHAT to asking HOW MUCH, my close rate jumped from 22% to 78%. Want even more Discovery training? Go here: https://lnkd.in/g2-Dw_jp

Yesterday, I delivered my final workshop of 2024 to my favorite client, G2. AEs & AMs brought Q4 deals at-risk for losing to status quo. We worked through tactics to reduce deal risk + re-engage execs at stalled opportunities. Here are the 4 Qs we worked through on their deals: 1) Can I quantify the cost of inaction (COI)? This is not ROI. This is not, "Every day you wait, you're missing out on the opportunity to improve X by 425%". Humans make stupid decisions constantly. Buyers are humans. We rarely assume risk to realize a benefit. ROI = by doing something, you MIGHT see this return. COI = by changing nothing, you ARE seeing this unintended cost/risk. 2) Do I know what other priorities and categories of spend I'm competing with? This is not "which of our competitors am I up against?". This is, "What other investments/priorities might take precedence over this one?". Ask your buyer this question directly. Make it easy for them to be honest with you. Don't rush to convince them to prioritize yours, before you deeply understand the others. 3) Do I know the 11.2 stakeholders involved in making the decision? Sometimes it's more. Sometimes it's less. But it's rarely just 1 person. Do you know who they are? More importantly, does your BUYER know who they are? We should be having this candid convo with our buyers. "In other companies i've worked with, here is how and where CXO tends to get involved, and here are the places where they typically push back. How might that look different with your CXO?". 4) Does my buyer have the skill and will to rally those other 10.2 stakeholders to give a sh*t about this spend? We could have the perfect solution to an expensive problem. But, our success/failure often lies in the hands of the messenger (our champion). Do the heavy lifting to help your buyer craft a narrative that will inspire them to advocate COI effectively. The key here is effort reduction. Job #1 is for the buying group to agree that this is a problem worth solving, and worth solving now. A big part of being great at Sales is being willing to put our egos aside. The reason I call G2 my favorite client is because there is ZERO ego on this team. They want to learn. They don't cut each other down. They're not stuck in "but this is how we've always done it". They APPLY what they learn (same-day in their sales calls). We laugh a lot in our workshops. A big part of that has to do with the learning culture G2 has created for their commercial org. It reminds me a lot of where I grew up learning how to sell (CEB). And, a ton of that credit goes to the women pictured below. When I think of the BEST of Sales Enablement leadership - I think of Emily Hyde. It's no surprise her team is just as A+. Eric Gilpin - thank you for being a CRO who invests in their Sales team's development and sets the bar high for what great leadership looks like. Now for a 3 week break before SKO (sales kickoff) season kicks off!

My team and I increased booked meetings by 44% in Q4, turning it into our best-performing quarter. While others struggled, we thrived using a simple yet effective framework. Are you finding it impossible to scale meetings during the toughest quarter of the year? Here’s the Prospect Engine 2024 Outreach Framework that delivered consistent results: Step-by-Step Framework 1. Email Campaigns - Having the right infrastructure is key to scaling outreach successfully. - Refresh subject lines every 14 days to keep engagement high. - Data sourcing is crucial—use tools like Apollo, Google directories, and Sales Navigator to gather clean, relevant data. 2. LinkedIn Campaigns Run these consistently to increase your outreach: - Regular Outreach: Personalized messages at scale. - InMail Campaigns: Target second- and third-degree connections using Sales Navigator to find the most relevant prospects. - Group Campaigns: Engage with niche LinkedIn groups. - Event Campaigns: Connect with attendees of relevant events. - Popular Post Campaigns: Interact with trending posts to reach active prospects. 3. LinkedIn Content - Post 4 times weekly to keep visibility up. - Boost posts strategically to maximize reach and engagement. - Refine your content by following industry leaders like Alex Hormozi, Josh Braun, and Justin Welsh (Find the leaders in your Industry) to analyze their strategies and engagement patterns. 4. Lead Nurturing and Management - Even with just 1-10 leads, if they align with your ICP, move forward. - Collect emails and WhatsApp numbers to diversify communication channels. Results? Our total deal closing tripled in Q4. Q4 doesn’t have to be your slowest quarter. With the right strategy, you can end the year on a high note. Want to make your outreach more effective? Send me a DM, and let’s talk about how this framework can work for your business. #B2BOutreach #LinkedInMarketing #ColdEmailTips

I've talked with ~70 Sales/Sales Dev Leaders or Founders in the past 90 days since leaving my full-time job at Apollo. And there's one thing that everyone agrees on: the SDR Playbook doesn't work like it did 5 years ago. Here are 7 things that are ARE working to generate pipeline in Q4 of 2024: 1. Warm Outbound Website visitors, job changers, CRM data (think: closed-lost deals, etc.), MAP data (people in your ICP engaging with marketing emails), data warehouse (product sign-ups/usage). 2. Signal-Based Selling Figure out what signals are best for your go-to-market team. There are hundreds. Start with the 3-5 highest impact signals, then layer in more over time. Use Apollo, Champify, CommonRoom, Koala, LinkedIn Sales Nav, Pocus, RB2B, Unify, UserGems, Warmly, Zoominfo. And again, don't overlook your own first-party data - some of your highest intent signals are hidden away, ready to be activated. 3. Micro-Campaigns Use AI/Clay to execute these. Small, highly-targeted lists of, say, 50-250 contacts. Generated using *very* specific filtering and/or signals (usually using AI/agents at least for certain parts). Each list (aka "micro-campaign") is relevant this week, but won't be next month. 4. Automated Outbound at Scale Run by a GTM Engineer. Works best for companies selling a low-ACV, high-TAM product. This role is becoming increasingly essential in orchestrating success across the entire customer lifecycle (from abm → inbound/outbound pipe gen → sales cycle optimizations → onboarding+adoption → upsell/cross-sell expansion → retention → to win-backs). 5. Cold Calling I keep hearing companies booking 33-50%+ of their meetings on the phone. Use Nooks or Orum, and Hyperbound to practice. I never pick up cold calls so this one has been surprising to hear, but hey!, data is data. And the data says - cold calling is working right now. 6. Founder/Exec Brand I'm particularly bullish on content on LI; I think it's still early. Study Dave Gerhardt, Adam Robinson, and many others running this playbook right now. Attention and "trust-at-scale" compounds. Few. 7. Return to Rigor Honestly, hard work is alpha right now. Put in the hours. Do the hard things that don't scale. (I'm speaking to myself here ha). TAKEAWAY: Every company is struggling to generate pipeline right now. BUT, there ARE ways to consistently book meetings. It just looks different than it did 5 years ago. The playbook is evolving in real-time. It's a massive opportunity.

Shocking stat: 80% of B2B buyers now prefer remote interactions over traditional sales meetings. After analyzing 1,000+ sales interactions across 12 industries in 2024. I've uncovered the blueprint for adapting to modern buyer behaviors. Here's what actually works now. Key Changes in Buyer Behavior: 1. Research Phase - 70% of buying decisions are made before contact - Buyers consume 13+ pieces of content pre-purchase - Self-service information gathering dominates 2. Digital-First Engagement - Virtual meetings preferred 3:1 over in-person - Asynchronous communication on the rise - Multi-channel touchpoints expected Adapting Your Strategy: 1. Content Alignment - Create decision-stage specific content - Develop self-service resources - Provide interactive tools 2. Sales Process Evolution - Shorter, focused sales cycles - Video-first communication - Hybrid engagement models 3. Technology Integration - AI-powered lead-scoring - Digital sales rooms - Real-time analytics Implementation Results: Our clients who adapted these strategies saw: - 40% shorter sales cycles - 55% higher close rates - 3x increase in buyer engagement The winners in 2025 won't be those with the best product, but those who best align with how buyers want to buy. What changes are you seeing in your buyers' behavior? #SalesStrategy #B2BSales #BuyerBehavior #SalesTransformation