201: Wait — What Even *Is* Account-Based Prospecting? ft. Lex Winship

In this switch-up episode, Lex interviews Sam re: the topic on everyone's mind: Account-Based Prospecting.

Proactive business development is the name of the game — but why should recruiters really care? And how can they actually get started? As VP of Marketing at Loxo, Sam knows a lot about Account-Based Marketing, Sales, and Prospecting.

He walks us through:

• How recruiters can leverage this approach to systematically win more clients
• Defining an ideal client profile (ICP)
• The role of AI in this process
• Effective outreach strategies
• Measuring success
• And more!

It's your practical guide to getting started with ABP — and a must-listen for modern recruiters.

Want to learn more about business development as a recruiter? Check out our biz dev for recruiters playbook here. And be sure to listen to our Tactical Tuesday episodes on the topic (which bookend this episode) for even more tips.

Transcript: 

Lex (00:01.489)
Hey everyone, it's Lex Winship and welcome to Becoming a Hiring Machine. This is the show dedicated to fixing recruitment by going beyond saying what needs to change and instead teaches you how to make a change. Today we have a kind of reverse trending topics episode ahead of us. But before we get into that, I want to tell you a little bit about the show. Essentially we have shows within the show. Sometimes we have interviews with industry thought leaders and others who are shaking up the space. Other times we cover trending topics like today.

Every Tuesday, we cover a Tactical Tuesday episode where we go deep on how to do something that will help drive better results in your day to day. And occasionally you'll hear a mic drop episode from Loxo's founder, Matt, where he shares something that he's been thinking about within the space and wants you to know. And as a reminder, if you like the content we share on here, please do all of the things, like, subscribe, follow for more, et cetera. So today, in today's fast paced world, we know that

Being good at finding candidates is not enough. Many recruiters are also forced to grow their business. And that is a complicated task, especially if you're not familiar with sales, biz dev, prospecting, et cetera. Proactive business development is key. But how do you do that without getting bogged down in outdated processes, juggling dozens of tools, et cetera? Exciting news.

often brings about really interesting conversations. And that's where we're at today. So you may have heard that last week, Loxo dropped a new feature called account based prospecting. We say feature, but it's more like a full product because this is like a competitor to B2B prospecting engines like zoom info. Like this is an insane, I don't know how we can possibly tell you how crazy this is without you just experiencing it yourself. but basically it's yeah, a B2B search engine.

literally built into your Loxo platform. So solving the problem of all of these disparate tools spread across your entire workflow. But this brings up some really important questions about what is account-based prospecting and why is it so important? And then most importantly, how can recruiters leverage this approach, this technology to systematically win more clients? So to help us unpack all of this, we are switching things up and having Sam sit in the guest seat today.

Lex (02:25.707)
As Loxo's VP of marketing, he is very, very in the know about all things marketing, and then also with a specific understanding of how this impacts recruiters and how they can apply this to be successful in their roles. So we're to pick his brain today. We're going to learn a bit about how we can shift out of that reactive seat when it comes to biz dev and instead be very strategic and very focused and intentional. So Sam, thank you for joining us.

Sam (02:53.762)
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It's been a while. So I'm so glad to be here with you.

Lex (02:58.343)
I know I'm glad to get to switch things up and interview you for once rather than the opposite doing things the other way around. I'm gonna put you on the spot. You're in the hot seat today. So let's start things off by just kind of setting the stage. The terms like account based sales, account based marketing, account based everything have kind of been buzzwords in the marketing world lately. I know that I've been seeing these terms floating around quite a bit, but

Sam (03:04.706)
Yeah, hopefully I don't regret this one later.

Sam (03:10.262)
huh. yeah.

Lex (03:28.369)
For recruiters who may not be as in the know, how would you explain the core philosophy of an account-based approach to business development and why is it so effective?

Sam (03:40.335)
So, account based marketing, account based sales, account based whatever, account based prospecting. So, it starts with the fundamental question of figuring out like who do I want to attract? Who do I want to acquire? Who do I want to have business with? Who do I want? Like, the who is the most important part of it. And so, where this is a little bit different than normal is...

Lex (03:45.799)
you

Sam (04:08.29)
With MPC, for example, it's like, you've got a great candidate. You know, which companies it could be a fit for your, you're matching it like a one-to-one level, but this is zooming out and looking at, okay, which companies fit the criteria of those that I want to have become a client. Are they in specific niches? Are they in specific regions? Are they have certain size? But it all goes back to like that starting with the who. so account based basically means in the beginning, the first step you're taking is mapping what.

Is the entire universe of these potential accounts that I would want to do business with. you identify those proactively to say, okay, I don't, I don't want to work with every potential company out there. Like I know I'll never work with BP. I know I'll never work with Salesforce. I know another work with giant hospital names. So it's, it's going and basically crafting that list of saying, okay, here are a thousand, 10,000, 100. It's going to vary by your niche, what your specialty is. There's no right or wrong answer to how big this is, but it's being able to have a defined list.

of the accounts that you want to engage to work with and they will be a mix of both prospects and clients for yourself.

Lex (05:15.321)
Okay, so you mentioned the MPC approach and that is one thing that I think is probably going to be one of our biggest questions is, okay, like, you know, when it comes to prospecting, when it comes to sales and biz dev, the MPC approach, the spec CV approach, like this has often been a recruiter's like number one way of growing their business. So what, what do we

What are we looking at, like what are we trying to avoid, I guess, there? And what is the potential fallback of relying exclusively on that MPC approach for Biz Dev?

Sam (05:47.191)
Yeah. So MPC does some things very well. That's why it's been around for years and it does some things where we're ready to evolve. So what does it do? Well, it communicates revel, revel, revelance, relevance. It communicates relevance. Yeah. Yeah. It's a similar word. So it's identifying, I have a great candidate for a role that I know you're hiring for. These are types of people you employ. They match your experience that you look for. They match previous.

Lex (05:51.045)
Yeah.

Lex (06:00.195)
Revealance too.

Sam (06:13.206)
industry is anything else. So you're playing into that relevance lens, but your value as a recruiter is tied to the MPC and how basically do you have access to that MPC? you pitching a candidate that you realistically have in your recruiting CRM or are you just hoping that this attracts their attention? Where account-based prospecting comes in is you control more of the story. You are.

the service at the end of the day, you're pitching yourself. And so this is being communicated by your unique knowledge, your unique skillset, your unique expertise. Um, we just had, or actually next week, I just recorded this with him, Dante Nino, and we talked all about what happens when you niche down the experience, the skills that come with it. listen in next Thursday for, for this episode is it will tie in closely to this, but where you really take more control over the narrative in this is you're developing the relationship proactively and

With MPC, it's usually you see that they have a job opening that you're trying to get the timing and just in time to get that candidate with account-based. A lot of it is in marketing. call it like getting on the first list and being memorable. when someone finally does have that pain where they need like, Hey, we need a talent intelligence platform. They're not sleeping in. What's the best talent intelligence platform into Google? It's Loxo. I know Loxo does talent intelligence platforms. Like they've demonstrated value credibility to me before they just go straight to the website. You're taking the same approach.

with account-based prospecting where you're creating those relationships. You're, whether it's through email, text, going and visiting in person, choose your delivery mechanism, but you've provided value to them through however you want to communicate it. But what do you focus on? Like, what are your specialties in terms of industries, verticals, types of roles that you fill? Do you work in specific regions of company types? And so that's where it goes back to building that initial list.

You're getting ahead of that practically. that way, when, you do focus on mega hospitals, when they need to hire a very specific nurse anesthetist, they think of you. They're not going to Google, job boards, to just the first agency that pops up in the LLM when it's just like, I need help placing nurse anesthetists. Where do I go? Like you're the person that's top of mind. And so that comes from your value being you, not the MPC that you're pitching when you notice that they have a vacancy that they need to fill.

Lex (08:31.591)
Yeah, I love this. And as a brand marketer, as someone who sits on the brand side of things, I love that this is almost an exercise in brand. It's like you reinforcing who you are and who you serve with every outreach. And it forces you to almost really niche down and understand who is it that I'm really, you know, that I'm targeting, who is it that I'm looking for? What is my ideal customer? So that leads me to another question, which is that.

Sam (08:38.83)
Mm-hmm.

Lex (08:56.401)
can be a can of worms in and of itself. You Loxo has just released this new feature slash product slash whatever we want to call it. It's so big and crazy product. but if you were a recruiter who just got access to this kind of integrated tool for the very first time, how would you go about defining your ideal client profile ICP, as we call it in the marketing world that, I that can be.

Sam (09:03.704)
product it's a product

Sam (09:18.754)
Mm-hmm.

Lex (09:21.979)
daunting, would say, especially for someone who's never put themselves through this exercise before. So where would you start?

Sam (09:27.702)
Yeah, it does sound daunting because anytime there's an acronym associated with something you're just like, this must Someone's done something someone's gonna have a strong point of view on it. Yes, it's gonna sound daunting reality It's not it simplifies a lot for you when you go through it it really doesn't have to be hard. So Let's say you've already Been a recruiter. You have an existing book of business. You've been in it for a couple years now You want to approach you know, I want to move from MPC and start thinking about how does account-based prospecting fit in?

Lex (09:31.271)
If

Lex (09:35.716)
Yup.

Sam (09:55.159)
So let's start with just three simple questions. And honestly, this is going to get you easily like 80%, 90 % of the way to figure out what your ICP is. So go and look at your historical data. Just look at your past year, past two years, you know, if you've ever felt like you were in a sweet spot with the clients that you like and everything else. So first question is, is there a specific niche that you do well? So this can either be based on historical data or can also be

based on your preference. Like, you know, I have a lot of clients in construction, but I really enjoy hospitals. I keep coming back to that one, but two very different niches, but that's going to lead into honing into your sweet spot, which is really the second part of this, which is okay. If I did only, if I have a unique value set based on my knowledge, my interest, cause the other day, you know, if you, you enjoy what you do and you want to learn about it, which is a huge part of becoming a subject matter expert in your niche, which will help put you above and beyond. in this type of approach,

Is what's your sweet spot in terms of industry industries? If it's a couple of them, specific job functions, do you operate in engineering and accounting in nurse practitioners? Are you constrained geo in terms like your, your geo region? So are you in a city? Do you only operate in a state? Do you operate in a certain country? Are you in an entire continent? So starting to hone in on and figuring out that part.

company size. And so this can be a number of different ways. It could be by the number of employees that a company has. could be by their revenue. It could be by their maturity stage. So, you know, are they an early startup type company? Are they fortune 100, been around for 150 years type company? So starting to figure out what are your sweet spots within there and then also compare that to what you know is going on within the space. So

Say you like construction. Well, construction's booming. Manufacturing is booming. Like that's a chance to double down or say you're focused on tech. Well, right now tech is kind of shrinking. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go into that, but just being mindful of also the business opportunity that lies ahead of you. And are you stepping into this space, hoping to eat some of that pie from other recruiters or are you already pretty well known? You've got a good book of clients that you're just like,

Sam (12:03.096)
I've been in this space for 15 years. Yeah, tech might be shrinking, but I have so much knowledge. have a great recruitment CRM that has all my candidates in it. Like I'm going to be just fine here. So honing in on those three questions and it's, it's pretty hard coded data. And I'm asking these questions specifically because like within Loxo, it's account based prospecting product. These are the questions that we ask that we get into. It's like, okay, what type of industries in there are they in? How big are they? What regions are they in?

And then you can start to work your way down from that. But those three questions will, will pretty well define your, your existing ICP. And one final caveat to that, just because someone is a client doesn't mean you want to continue to get clients like them. I'm pretty sure most recruiters think this, know this. So this is why I specifically said like, know your sweet spot and who you like to work with. Also the ones that do well, repeat business that you can further grow into. That's what you really want to be thinking as part of this ICP exercise, not just who could potentially.

Lex (12:39.206)
Yeah.

Lex (12:44.416)
you

Sam (13:00.344)
come to me and then yeah, it gets a little dicey as we all know.

Lex (13:03.909)
Yeah. I would also like to add that this is a great use case for AI. If you don't know where to start when it comes to like defining your ICP, this is an exercise where you can kind of just one stress test your ideas against AI and kind of go back and forth, but then also just brain dump all of the information that you have about what kinds of clients you like working with. then ask Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude, whoever you're working with, what are the things that are missing here? What are the gaps that are missing for me to be able to

define a, an ICP and then begin making outreach to these specific people. So, this is an opportunity where again, AI can really help you do something that otherwise can be a little bit nebulous and difficult, especially if you don't have a ton of great data at your fingertips. If you already have a great jam packed recruiting CRM that has a ton of data in it that you trust and that you feel is actually representative of the way that you conduct your business. That's awesome.

But you're ahead of 90 % of recruiters if you fit in that category. So I would just say, if you're hearing this and saying, okay, that all sounds great, but I don't have data. I've only got like, everything lives up here in my brain, brain dump into an AI tool and start to just go back and forth with it within, you know, this exercise. And you will come away with some information that will give you a starting point.

Sam (14:16.718)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (14:25.966)
Yeah, I agree. And even with that, still, you don't have to go mega niche, but try to hone in on a certain direction. Don't, don't open up and be like, well, any company that's hiring, it's like, well, that's not going to be helpful. Cause it goes back to that relevance point. Why does MPC work so well? Because of relevance, we still need to hit on that variable.

Lex (14:42.651)
Yep. And then to that point too, you can also use AI to do some of that market research of like, okay, where is hiring really surging right now? Where is there lot of need? Where is it? Maybe not as much, or even within tech, what are these small sub-sects of tech that are still hiring quite a bit? You can start to kind of do that market research that can also feel a bit overwhelming sometimes to know, all right, where do I fit within this constantly changing market? You can start to use AI as a tool for that as well. So.

Sam (15:03.832)
Mm-hmm.

Lex (15:11.131)
just a little subtle plug there. So one of the benefits that we talk about a lot within just the Loxo ecosystem as a whole is just the integrated element. One of the big wins there, in my opinion, is having outreach built directly into your platform. when it comes to candidate outreach, that's a thing. But then also here with prospecting, that's a huge, huge value add. So how would you leverage a tool like Loxo Outreach to then

Sam (15:11.266)
Yep.

Lex (15:40.299)
Start to reach out once you've identified your ICP. What is your, what does your outreach process look like moving away from that spray and pray type of mentality and instead being very intentional about specific industries, roles, company growth stages, et cetera.

Sam (15:58.191)
It's gonna keep going back to relevance. Relevance, relevance, relevance. feel like, why is it Brady Bunch? Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. So with this one, yeah, relevance is always going to be the biggest thing. And one thing that I love about our account-based prospecting product is once you go and identify the companies, I literally recorded a video of this the other day. It blew my mind as a marketer. I'm like, why can't I do this better in my product than I can use in the solutions, the tools that I use as a marketer every day? In 60 seconds, I mapped an entire,

Lex (16:02.791)
you

Sam (16:27.978)
niche market and found the decision makers and was able to enter them into a workflow. Like that's how easy this is. But what I'm getting to with this is once you identify your ICP, it can tell you within.

our product, who are the relevant decision makers for it? Mine was pretty broad because I didn't put any jobs that I was looking for yet or anything else within there, but you can go and then type in if there's specific areas within it, know, finance and accounting, if it's sales, if it's engineering, you can pop that into the Boolean with it. And then it's going to say, okay, based on the criteria that you've added from your key accounts and then what we know you're looking for, here's going to be the key decision makers. And if you've used Lockzoo, you know, we have contact data.

We have work email, especially, and phones that you can get to from that. So where that's coming from is think about your workflow from the candidate workflow. It's the same exact thing that we've got plugged in here where it's identify the accounts, put your decision makers in. You can add them to a list. You can add them to an outreach campaign. can automate it all for you. But what do you say? Yeah. The outreach that's so important. And that's, this is also why I always say start with your who, because that informs the message that informs the relevance that comes with it. And so.

creating a Omni channel Multi-step nurture sequence because again, we're proactively getting in front of these people You're not NBC them trying to hit him at the right time you want to demonstrate trust and credibility ahead of time and this is something Vivian and I talked about all the time on tactical Tuesday is No one likes to get a call from recruiter where you know, you're gonna be pitched at the end of it Or it's just like so do you have any jobs? Like this is a great way to just create that relationship talk Let them know about what you can do and just leave it

at that. creating just a multi-step, but over time, this doesn't need to occur within one week. Have this go out over the course of a quarter, over two quarters, drop in a monthly newsletter to them. Hey, here's what I've seen. If you're niching down, here's what I'm seeing in healthcare right now in Minnesota, some trends that you should be aware of, like what jobs are hot, who's hiring, what skills or conferences are going on for your team to level up, like create and share that type of stuff.

Sam (18:32.972)
You know, your clients are asking you when they're engaged with you and just practically get ahead of that. So adding that value, sharing that knowledge, sharing those industry insights, that's the best thing that you can do at this stage. Because again, they haven't said they have jobs that they want you to work, but you know that there is going to be this need eventually. And it's all that goal of once you get on that first list. And what I realized earlier, why I never said, why is it first list so important when you're on that first list? I think the stat was four.

Out of five times when someone does go to market, whether it's for a recruiter, for a tool, they choose off of a short list that they mentally had of here are the options that are in the market. 90 % of the time, the one of the top three that they thought of before they went to Google, before they went to peers, were just who they mentally had in mind. So that mind share is so, so, so important. And that's what you're trying to accomplish here because all of the

MPCs in the world, even if they get there at the right time, if you're ahead of them, because they think of Lex at Loxo, she recruits for nurse practitioners, nurse, the test, the system, this they're going to come to you first. Everyone else is going to be like, well, they kind of do this, but man Lex is really, she's just built up. Like I know her value. seems so smart. Like everyone else is chasing up to you at that point. And that's your competitive advantage there and why it's so important to just front load all this value to them ahead of time.

Lex (19:54.769)
So I love all of these points. I'm curious when it comes to the breakdown between candidate communication and general best practices of outreach there, did the same rules apply in general when it comes to reaching out to clients? Should we restructure our approach a little bit? What are, yeah, what are some of the like nuances there? Or is it kind of like outreach best practices or outreach best practices and like that's, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Sam (20:19.479)
Yeah.

I can give you the basic answer and say outreach best practices are outreach best practices because they are, but at the same time there will be different nuances to like, what does a candidate care about to what does a prospect care about? At the end of the day, potential candidates are going to want to make more money, find a better job, better work-life balance, better benefits, whatever that is, better location. But on the prospect side, there's three pains that I don't care what, when people are buying something, whether it's product to service, they want to save time.

They want to make more money. They need to save money. It's one of those three things. So positioning that not right off the bat, but speaking to the pains of like, especially if they're trying to hire very niche roles that are hard to fill. People aren't applying on job boards, like communicating like, I've, know, here's some stats for these, this role to know about or whatever it could be. But like leading with that type of information is what they're going to care about. So how do you get that to them?

That's where I say like add your personality to add your flavor because we were joking about this a lot even the guys over at base camp Jason Fried was like They explained AI writing is the color brown Personalities how you stand out and That's honestly one thing that is so refreshed like with a recruiter find me I know you all love to talk to be yourselves to enjoy the conversation like that's what you do best and that's why

Agents, interesting because it's, reducing all this admin burden that they do so they can go and do like, want to talk to candidates. I want to talk to clients. I want to enjoy the FaceTime and all that. Like this is your perfect chance to shine within all of that and really make sure that you're putting a spotlight on it. So lean into that with this type of outreach, add your personality to it while demonstrating your knowledge and skillset.

Lex (22:08.551)
And yeah, I think this is a great opportunity for...

just really getting truly creative. I think this is something that recruiters have within them innately, but they just often have been so burdened by admin, by all of the steps of their workflow, their tech, all of that. And now this is an opportunity for you to say like, okay, what are the kinds of emails that I like to open? When I scroll through my inbox, I can see that there are plenty of emails that I just haven't touched and I never will. What's, what do those emails have in common and what do the ones that I open have in common? And you can start to even

Sam (22:37.814)
Mm-hmm.

Lex (22:41.559)
and use your own qualitative insights there as a guide for what kind of content should I be creating and how should I structure it. So I would say like, this is a great opportunity to just like really get creative. And then also we have a couple of really great guides on business development, outreach, et cetera. And we're going to continue creating more of this content now, especially now that we've released account-based prospecting within the product. So this is a, you know, an ever evolving conversation, best practices shift and change with the seasons. So.

This is one of those things where unfortunately there's no clear cut answer of this thing works and it always will. It's going to evolve. think I love that both Vivian and Will Spengler on recent podcast episodes said when everyone else is digging, you've got to zag. We're here to help you guys navigate that, but I think it is one of those areas where you just kind of have to be open to experimentation and figuring it out as you go.

Sam (23:34.072)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yep.

Lex (23:38.463)
Perfect. Okay, so we've talked a lot about just kind of like the basics of account-based prospecting, but I still feel like it's really important for us to understand what...

If you were just getting started with ABP, you're integrating an account-based prospecting strategy into your workflow. How would you, what would you suggest as like a quick wins, initial focus areas that will help you start to build some momentum while also laying the groundwork for a long-term sustainable client acquisition strategy? Like how can we get started here? If I'm a recruiter day one using this tool.

Sam (24:06.52)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

All right, Sam be concise, quick wins, just getting started. Three buckets. First bucket. We kind of touched on it earlier, but just pick out, if you've been doing this, pick out your top 10 clients, figure out what makes them similar. Industry, size, company maturity, types of roles that you're filling with it. If you're truly just getting started, you don't have clients yet. Find your interests and go identify 10 potential prospects use account based.

prospecting tool or whatever else that may be, but figure out what are those similarities between them. Do you like working with startups? Do you like working with the big companies in the niches? But go and try to hone in on that because again, it all starts with the who. I will always say go and start with that as step one, everything else, the message, how you communicate, where you communicate, the medium that you communicate that all follows from the who. So that's step number one. Step number two.

is find your key learnings and the insights from those and

You, you have a unique data set and insights that you've gathered from your engagement with these clients, from the prospects, from the candidates, anonymized names, but lead with these in your outreach to the prospects, because it's going to be like, can say, you know, Hey, I just worked with the hospital 50 miles from you, insert the name of the hospital. They were struggling with X, Y, Z when we were talking about pains and stuff earlier.

Sam (25:41.763)
I talked to them, I've got them a great candidate at this point. know that's the harder pitch, but you could even soften that up and say, you know, they've been really struggling with this. So here are the conversations that we've been having. I've been helping them figure out like, why is this important? Is it important to business growth? Is it an efficiency thing? You need to save time. You don't have the money. Again, those three, three pain points, but use that to put your foot in the door and you don't have an MPC yet. You don't have to pitch on me up. But like, again, you're the product at the end of the day. So how do you demonstrate that?

credibility, the knowledge, expertise. People like to buy things that they know work. And so when you use that other hospital name, it's 50 miles down the road that they know of, or you mentioned that you spoke with the head of nurse practitioners over there. You've been engaging with them for six months and helping them. That's credibility to them. like, this person already vetted you out. We trust you. Or I at least don't want to slam the door in your face just quite yet. So those are big, but again,

anonymize the Not PII data, but just like sensitive data. Don't use revenue figures. Don't use Use common sense. I don't have to tell you what to use and whatnot to use but be mindful of that things that most clients wouldn't want you to share don't share that and From there. I would say set some goals for yourself figure out like okay, I want to Identify a hundred potential prospective accounts that I can reach out to over the course of this month. I want to have

Five conversations this week, that's one a day. Or if I want to do all this identifying early in the week, might be two a day for the back half of the week. The goal in the beginning, again, we're not MPCing, it's not to pitch jobs, it's not to get things filled ASAP, but it's to get on the first list of the people, to have the relationships start to be built. And so that's probably where I'd get started is just like the who, what do they care about and fostering that relationship to start to get on that first list for them.

Lex (27:39.731)
I love that. also feel like this is, you talked a little bit about just, yeah, like evidence and trust building, like case studies. Like these are things that are just like hallmarks of marketing in general. And so I think like, this is a great opportunity to, there are so many resources out there when it comes to marketing and sales best practices. This is an area where obviously within recruitment specifically, there are some nuances, but there's also a lot of best practices that just apply across the board. So again, another really great use case for learning using AI as a tool.

to learn and start to develop like your own strategy. Hey, you know, help me create a strategy that incorporates best practices from sales and marketing in 2025, but that also incorporates my own distinct nuances, the nuances of my industry, the nuances of what I do specifically. So I think again, this is a tool, this is an opportunity to use a tool to help you then be more strategic and also more creative once you actually have that strategy in place.

Sam (28:38.594)
Yeah, yeah. And creativity is such a differentiator for recruiters right now. Like, lean into it.

Lex (28:42.865)
so much.

Yeah, and have fun with it also. Like, I feel like this is...

People have a lot of fear around AI, which I understand as well, and I don't want to, you know, discredit that or not take that seriously. But I also think like there's a lot of fun that we can have right now that I don't want people to miss out on. This is a fun and interesting time to like, again, experiment, try new things and experiment much faster than we've ever been able to before. So I would just encourage everyone like take the opportunity to, yeah, have a little bit of fun with it if you can. Okay, so.

Sam (29:16.949)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lex (29:20.095)
This is probably me and my insecure type A personality coming through, but like, I wanna know when I start a new thing, am I getting it? Am I doing this right? Am I winning? What does winning look like? I'm asking these questions to myself and curious, like, what are the key metrics that if I'm just getting started with this, I should be tracking in order to understand the effectiveness of my efforts beyond just.

number of new clients signed, which feels like kind of like the most basic. What else should I be aware of? How do I know I'm winning? I want to know.

Sam (29:52.751)
Mm-hmm. How do I know I'm winning? Do you feel good at the end of the day? It's totally totally qualitative. Um No, this is um, I steal frameworks all the time. There's a guy I would you recruiters there's there's a running joke, you know recruitment software is always like five to ten years behind martech sales tech all that like go look and see where martech and sales tech at today in terms of both like functionality of their products, but also

The playbooks, the frameworks, the strategies being used by those companies to acquire companies. Cause they're doing something similar. Like this is what I'm using today to figure out like who are the best prospective clients that I want to have bring on as Loxo customers. Like this is the type of stuff that I'm doing. So take frameworks. This one I stole from Kyle Poyer. Definitely recommend checking him out. He's got a newsletter growth unhinged. Go, go look at it. I like to things simple. so color coding.

sounds, sounds dumb, but when you just want to look at something and understand at a high level, like if I want to get past just new client sign, but understand progress when you're looking at something with a finite universe, like your ICP where you know, okay, there's a hundred prospective accounts that I want to get in front of. I like to see a progress chart. And so I break it out. Kyle breaks it out. I've iterated upon it, but basically into six core categories. There is like, I know this prospect exists. They do not know I exist.

There is, I know this prospect exists. They know that I exist. There is interested. They have done something to signal like not just that I exist, but they've been to our website or something else. And I'll get into some metrics in a second. There is considering like there's active interest. They want to learn more about me, my service, my agency. There is selecting. They've engaged. Like I want a proposal. What would a contract look like to work with you? And then there is.

I'm a customer, I use Sam's best recruiting agency. So with this, what I like to do is color code. You can pick any color that you want, but basically I'd have a hundred boxes laid out and for each box it represents a prospect. So for those who are identified, but unaware, I might just leave that as black for those that are aware. And I'm going to define aware as like there's different

Sam (32:12.814)
tools that you can use. basically I'll look at like, have they visited our website? Have they opened emails? If you're running ads, have they clicked an ad before? things like that. I might make them, let's call them blue. And so then you can see, okay, we've got black, we've got blue for those who are interested. These are, they came to our website. They opted into the email newsletter that I send every month. They signed up for a webinar that I'm hosting about the best ways to, to attract nurse practitioners to you.

Things like that Let's call that one red. I've got black blue red Considering so these are ones who are just like hey Sam's best recruitment agency Sounds like a pretty pretty good spot to to use for this. It would be okay I'm going to Look at people who have come to my website and said like I want to I want to talk to you learn more about it They've emailed you called you whatever that might be. Let's call that one green

And then you have selecting, it's you've sent them a contract. You've sent them a proposal. That one's pretty straightforward. We'll call that one purple. And then they're a customer. Great. Hurrah. Let's call that one yellow. And so what I do is I lay all these out. And so what you'll see early on, you'll see a lot of black and a lot of blue. You'll see a lot of unaware. You'll see a lot of maybe aware, not much of the other colors. That's okay. That's where most people are. because the MPC, it's, only going after like the customer selecting, trying to get into that space.

But over time, if you're doing your job and you're educating and driving value, they will be visiting your website. They'll be opening your emails. You'll start to see more of those black turn into blue. As they open those emails, they get value from you. They call you back. You'll start to see more become into considering. So they'll go, I'm already losing track of the colors. think blue to red, but you'll start to see this gradual shift where what used to be predominantly black and blue is now actually becoming more of this like yellow, purple, green that we had at the end.

And that's what you want to see to track. Ultimately, like it's not just how many clients can I get signed this month, but it's progress over time. You're not going to go and win an entire market. Nor will you ever win an entire market. This whole thing should never be fully yellow. If you are, you win life. Good job. Congrats. Go sell this as a course. You are not getting paid enough if you're only doing this as a recruiter, but

Lex (34:20.675)
That's what I want.

Sam (34:27.982)
That's, that's probably the best way to keep your sanity a little bit and tracking progress. Cause sometimes it can seem like, man, am I, am I making any progress at all? I'm not seeing, like you said, like I'm not seeing new clients coming in, but it's getting on that first list. It's developing the trust and that's, that's the, the area you'd like to go in. And so that's why I like to take pictures every week, every month of like, what does that color coded chart look like? So you can see that progress over time.

Lex (34:51.779)
That's cool, I like that idea. I'm curious, like you mentioned, okay, you're not gonna just sign 100 new clients in a month. What is, if we're trying to maintain our sanity, what are some good ways of looking at this from a time perspective? Should we be tracking this on a monthly basis? Should we be tracking it on a quarterly basis? If we want to start to wrap our heads around...

tracking improvements and efficiency as we're moving people through that pipeline. What is the best time boundness to put around that?

Sam (35:24.27)
Yeah, that's a really good question. We get that all the time and marketing. We just started spending all this all this money on ad campaigns. We just started selling all these emails. Where are the leads? Yeah, exactly. If you're going from really not having done much or a very unaware audience, it's going to take you a few quarters to see meaningful, meaningful increases in this. That's OK. Part of it depends on how much resourcing you can put forward to it. If you

Lex (35:30.465)
When can we see it work?

Sam (35:51.481)
Don't have a lot of time. It's gonna take longer than a few quarters. If you're just like, I'm gonna go gung-ho on this. It might be in a quarter, but the reality is it's not gonna be in a week. It's not gonna be in two weeks. It's definitely not gonna be in a day. But the the realistic-ness of it is because if success to you is like they want a contract, they want to talk to you. First off, you know how long it takes to get to that. So there's there's that natural time period, time lag that's that's involved. But getting on to the first list.

That takes time because you have to let your emails start to do their work. You have to let your calls start to do the work. So there's that element to it. And then they also have to start trusting you more too. And that comes from repetition. And with repetition, with the message, make sure that you're like, what do you want to be known for? And just hammer that away, say it a million different ways, but all rooted around the same general message. Keep showing up like that. That's going to take you probably a quarter of doing all that. There's some marketing stat, I forget how many, but it's like how many, how many

You need to see an ad or a message before it finally like sticks and you become memorable I don't know what it is, but it's a lot I'll spare you the the fake stat that I'm not gonna pull out of you know where to put it on here, but That's why I say give yourself some time but it's a it's the equivalent of like Rolling a snowball down a hill it will become an avalanche But it has to start with that little snowball if you don't start it You can jump all you want and throw a hissy fit on the top of the mountain. That's not gonna start the avalanche you have to

Lex (36:52.568)
Yeah.

Sam (37:19.458)
make some concerted effort towards making that happen.

Lex (37:21.931)
Yeah, I always, I like to think about this in the sense of...

Reactive things, it's really easy to see your impact right away because you're solving a problem, essentially. know, like, there's water pouring out of a hole. I can plug up that gap. And I know that that worked. When you're doing a proactive strategy, you go to the dentist every six months to get your teeth cleaned and you end up living a life with no cavities. It's easy to forget, like I did work to make sure that I didn't get a cavity, you know, and I think...

It's one of those things where it's like you might not be able to see the impact right away, but like doing the work is leading to something. And I just want to encourage people who have been in that very reactive mode and are used to seeing results right away because of that. The lack of results right away doesn't mean that you're headed in the wrong direction. It just might take a little bit more time.

Sam (38:13.836)
Yeah. Yeah. And when you think about the best recruiters, the best agencies, they are usually well known in the space because they've been at it for years. They have unique market knowledge, expertise, like they're in, they're in niches, but they've followed, they've probably followed a very methodical process like this, where it's, know exactly who they want to be working and engaging with. And they've put forth a proactive effort. How do I get trust from these people? What knowledge do I need to know? What relationships do I need to have?

Lex (38:21.443)
Yeah.

Sam (38:42.348)
They've been trudging along daily into this, but this is like, yeah, to like your point with the dentist, like it's a 1 % improvement every day type thing, but that stacks up very fast. or not fast, over a couple quarters over time. It's a good thing to do over time, not fast. Sorry, I misspoke there, but yeah, yeah, seriously. Sam said it's fast. So that's something I would say. It's like, this isn't just a new strategy. It's being pulled out of thin air.

Lex (38:56.279)
Nist mixing must.

Sam (39:07.776)
It might not have been called, can tell you it hasn't been called this for decades, but this type of acquisition strategy spans industries, spans technologies, services. Like this is a fundamental way to acquire new business.

Lex (39:24.131)
Okay, well, thank you for giving us a crash course on all things account-based everything and specifically account-based prospecting. Anything else as we wrap that you wanna just share and end on?

Sam (39:36.835)
I'm going to regret this. Anyone who has listened to this this far, if you have questions, if you want help, reach out to me, our team, this is what we do. So sam at loxo.co again, I know I'm going to regret this. Like send me an email on LinkedIn, send me a DM. If you want help figuring out like, how do I define my ICP? How do I think about this? Show me how it works in the product. I'm more than happy to jump into this with you. I love this stuff. I live and breathe in this stuff. I'm happy to set up whatever will be helpful for you. Reach out to us. This, we want you to be successful with this.

Lex (40:05.47)
Listen, if you're listening to this right now and you don't message Sam, you are crazy because there are marketers all around the world across different industries who would kill for like a private session with Sam teaching them how to fix their marketing. So you recruiter, lucky recruiter who is listening to this, make Sam regret making that offer. I want to see him regret this. That should be the goal.

Sam (40:24.302)
please.

Sam (40:27.788)
Lex Lex won't be able to get on my sorry Lex we're gonna have to skip our one-on-one for seven weeks because I'm booked up

Lex (40:32.163)
Hey, that would make me happy. That would be a good reason to skip.

okay. Well, thank you so much for all of this. I'm excited to get this out there. And again, yes, reach out to Sam. If you have questions though, about specifically how to do account-based prospecting in Loxo, you can also reach out to us. we've got an amazing team of people who are ready to help. If you're just curious about what does this product look like? How could I incorporate it? We're here for that as well. So don't hesitate to reach out for consulting on a strategy basis, or also just to learn more about the product. But.

That's it. That's all she wrote for today. So as we close becoming a hiring machine is you guessed it, a production of Loxo. If you liked this episode, but you're not sure where to go next, we will have a link to a similar one in the show notes. We're also going to link a business development playbook that we've put together that has a lot of this information and then a lot of other just kind of general best practices about biz dev. So if you are looking for your next step, that can be a helpful resource. You can find the show notes in the description of your favorite.

podcast streaming platform as well as on our website loxo.co slash podcasts. Full video episodes are available on YouTube as well as on our website. And if you have specific questions or are looking for advice, you can send us an email at podcast at loxo.co or you can reach out to Sam directly on this one. last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a quick rating in your podcast streaming platform. It only takes a couple of seconds and it will help other recruiters find us. So that's it. That's the show. Thank you

again to Sam for joining us and letting me put you in the hot seat this time. Until next time, everyone have a great day.

Sam (42:12.45)
Bye y'all.