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Zero to Launch · Session 03 · Wed Sep 2, 2026

Outbound Agents

B2B, and your first ten customers

Ship AIPhoenix, ArizonaPress → to begin

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Your first ten B2B customers are hand-won, one at a time.

That work looks nothing like a funnel diagram, which is why so many B2B founders run B2C tactics and wonder why nothing converts.

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Tonight

  1. 01An ICP you can write an email to
  2. 02The six stages, and what moves a deal between them
  3. 03Outbound that gets replies
  4. 04Design partners and pilots
  5. 05Champions → advisors → references
  6. 06A pipeline you can show a judge
  7. 07Twenty accounts and a sequence, built live
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Where we are

  1. Aug 5GTM Engineering
  2. Aug 19Zero to $3,000
  3. Sep 2Outbound Agents
  4. Sep 16Unfair Advantage
  5. Oct 7Ship the Surface
  6. Oct 14Agentic Growth
  7. Oct 16Hackathon

Six Wednesdays, then the weekend. Every session is free and standalone — you don't have to attend all of them to compete in October, and catching up late is explicitly allowed.

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Act one

Who, exactly

The whole method rests on this. Get it wrong and every email after it is aimed at nobody.

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If you can't name twenty real accounts, the ICP is still too broad.

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An ICP you can write an email to

  • CompanySize, stage, stack, industry. Specific enough that some obviously don't qualify.
  • RoleThe person with the problem, and separately the person with the budget. Often not the same human.
  • Trigger eventThe thing that just happened that makes this urgent now instead of someday. This is the part everyone skips.
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Act two

The six stages

For each arrow, the specific thing that has to happen. An event, not an opinion.

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What actually moves a deal

  1. AwarenessThey replied. That's the whole bar for this arrow.
  2. InterestA real call happened, and they brought someone else to it.
  3. EvaluationSecurity review, procurement, a pilot scope.
  4. DecisionSigned. Where B2B deals stall is the arrow before this one.
  5. OnboardingThey got value without you in the room.
  6. ExpansionWhere B2B economics actually come from.
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Outbound

Volume

  • Send 500
  • Merge tags
  • Follow up 7 times
  • Reply rate < 1%
  • Domain burned

Relevance

  • Send 20
  • You read their site
  • Follow up twice, then stop
  • Reply rate you'd tell people
  • Domain intact

Twenty good emails take an afternoon. Five hundred bad ones take an afternoon too.

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What a good first touch does

  • Proves you lookedOne specific line about them that couldn't be in anyone else's email.
  • Names the problem, not the productThey care about the thing that's broken, not your architecture.
  • Asks for something smallFifteen minutes, or a yes/no question. Not a demo, not a deck.
  • Fits on a phone screenIf it scrolls, it's a document — and nobody reads documents from strangers.
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Act three

Trust compounds

Slowly, and then quickly. The first reference is the expensive one.

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Champions → advisors → references

compounds
  1. 01One champion inside one account
  2. 02A pilot scoped to produce a story
  3. 03A quotable customer sentence
  4. 04The next deal starts warm

Structure the pilot before you offer it — scope, length, and what you're allowed to publish, decided before the call rather than during it.

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Do this tonight

~/your-product

/icp-builder

reading the product…20 named accounts, 4 filtered outwrote 03-b2b/accounts.md

Defines the ICP tight enough to write to, then builds the named account list. It drafts; you check every row — a list you haven't read is a list you won't send to.

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Then write the sequence

~/your-product

/outbound-sequence → /funnel-metrics

drafting 1 touch + 2 follow-upsstages instrumentedwrote 03-b2b/README.md

First touch, two follow-ups, and a break-up that doesn't grovel. Then instrument the stages, and add /bi-agent for the weekly read.

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A spreadsheet is a fine CRM. An anecdote is not a pipeline.

In October a judge will ask what moved last week. Receipts are 30% of the score.

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Feel the fear and do it anyways.

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Next

Unfair Advantage — Wed Sep 16, CEI Gateway

Why should anyone pick you over the thing they already use? Value prop, USPs, positioning and the pitch — written live, cut, said out loud, cut again.

shipai.club · Free, always

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