Prospecting and outreach: getting the first conversation

Ideal customer profile and buyer personas

• ICP (the company): industry, size, location, growth stage, technology used, signals (hiring, funding, expansion).
• Persona (the person): role, responsibilities, goals, pains, how they're measured.

Example ICP for a hiring platform: startups and mid-size companies (20–500 employees) in Indian metros, hiring 5+ freshers a year; persona: HR manager or founder who struggles with screening volume and campus hiring costs.

Finding leads

LinkedIn (and Sales Navigator), company websites, job postings (a company hiring many freshers needs hiring help), industry directories, events and trade shows, referrals from happy customers, inbound leads from marketing, and tools like Apollo or Lusha for contact data (respecting data protection rules).

Cold calling

A simple structure:

1. Opener (permission-based): "Hi Priya, this is Aman from HireSol. I know I'm calling out of the blue. Can I take 30 seconds to say why, and you can tell me if it's worth a chat?"
2. Reason for the call, relevant to them: "I saw you're hiring 10 sales interns this quarter. Teams like yours tell us screening 500 applications eats a week of HR time."
3. Question to start a conversation: "How are you handling screening right now?"
4. Goal: book a 20-minute meeting, not sell on the first call.

Tips: stand up and smile (it changes your voice), research for 2 minutes before each call, call at sensible times, keep notes in the CRM, and treat rejection as data, not as personal.

Cold email and LinkedIn

• Subject: short, specific, personal ("Screening for your 10 intern roles").
• First line about them, not you.
• One problem, one result (ideally with proof), one easy ask.
• Under 120 words; no attachments in the first email.
• Follow up 3–5 times over 2–3 weeks with new value each time (a case study, an insight); most replies come after follow-ups.

Subject: Screening 500 intern applications

Hi Priya,

Noticed Acme is hiring 10 sales interns this quarter. Congratulations on the growth.

HR teams at similar startups told us screening takes them 5–6 days per role.
Brightline cut that to a day by asking applicants for a 20-minute pitch task
and only reviewing the top-scored ones.

Worth a 15-minute call next week to see if that would work for you?

Aman

Check yourself

• Write an ICP for a company selling accounting software to small shops.
• Write a 3-line cold call opener for a cloud-kitchen software product.
• Why should follow-ups add new value instead of "just checking in"?