1/ I recently read about Adjacent User Theory and, despite …

2/ General concept is that just beyond your existing users are groups of potential users who would better adopt your product if it were positioned differently. As you expand your positioning, you convert under-engaged users.

In outbound sales it's the same.

3/ Too many startups try too hard to guess their exact prospect profile. This is necessary to find their first successful customer profile, but beyond that, identifying new types of prospects should be more formulaic.

4/ Here's how I've done it to identify 12 different successful prospect profiles in a few months:

- Use the 80/20 rule: 20% of the leads you reach out to should fall outside of your current core prospect profile.

5/ Priority should be on profiles with only 1-2 differences from the current core. Perhaps a slightly different pain point, but not dramatically different.

6/ You want someone who, if you could successfully attract them, would open up an untapped market for you but who could still see value (even if not fully optimized) in the current messaging.

7/ As you include the 20% fringe prospects in your outreach, you'll start to see which ones are picking up on the value props you present.

8/ When you start to see decent response rates from a specific fringe prospect profile, it's time to create a separate campaign with messaging focused specifically on their pain points.

9/ You can do this dozens of times per month, and likely find a handful of new potential markets with each test batch, and you can now scale your pipeline up without exhausting any specific profile too quickly.

10/ For example:

I was running outbound for a last-mile logistics platform focused on grocery retail. I (in this case accidentally) included a batch of non-grocery retailers in the lead list. Turns out the response rate for non-grocery was 10x that of grocery.

11/ This story doesn't end as well because the client wasn't interested in non-grocery retail for a number of reasons. But the process still works.

12/ If you're purposeful about who you include as a fringe profile, you'll be able to gradually expand from your core into new markets that you are ready for and that are ready for you.

1/ I recently read about Adjacent User Theory and, despite it being focused on expanding existing users. thought there were some great takeaways about prospecting.

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