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Cold Outreach

Definition

Unsolicited communication — email, phone call, LinkedIn message, physical mail — to a prospect with whom the sender has no prior relationship. In deal sourcing, cold outreach is the primary mechanism for reaching founders and intermediaries outside of an existing referral network. The effectiveness of cold outreach has declined sharply as inboxes have saturated with AI-generated templates, making personalization and unique hooks more valuable than ever.

Context

Cold outreach is a major theme across Deal Sourcery:

  • Kate Hopkins in Ep. 2 presents cold outreach from the content-supply side: Portfolio Operations teams can function as sourcing enablement, creating the collateral that powers outreach campaigns. She describes ops teams scripting six-touch cold email sequences, producing battle cards analogous to sales enablement, and packaging portfolio benchmarking data into data snacks — bite-sized ratios, visual snippets, and bullet-point insights associates can embed in emails. Kate cites one sourcing associate who "was always asking me for ratios" because "I get really positive responses from founders when I give them really concrete things." (Ep. 2)

  • Ryan Murphy in Ep. 22 emphasizes that "a unique subject line is such an overlooked part of the job" and personalizes every outreach. He leverages his Olympic background, franchise ownership, and advisory board experience as hooks.

  • Jake Colognesi in Ep. 20 argues that "being as human as possible is oddly enough a differentiator" in an AI-saturated world, and has purchased a typewriter from France for off-pattern physical outreach.
  • Glenn Oken in Ep. 21 emphasizes that "leaving a voicemail doesn't cut it" and advocates using precision and discipline to structure cadenced outreach via CRM.
  • Chris Reilly in Ep. 23 describes direct outreach as the tertiary channel after referrals and sponsor coverage, noting that in-person meeting requests get dramatically higher response rates than transactional emails.