Playbook

Objection scripts · LADDER stage checklists · closing moves

10 scripts
The four decisions that come before everything else

Elite reps make these four decisions BEFORE writing a single word of outreach, BEFORE opening Apollo or Clay, BEFORE picking a sequence template. Skip them and you are iterating a broken campaign instead of launching a working one.

01

Who exactly are you targeting?

Not "VP of Sales at mid-market SaaS companies." That is a category, not a target.

An elite-level ICP definition includes:

  • Specific company size range — headcount AND revenue, not one or the other.
  • Funding stage or revenue model that creates the specific pain you solve.
  • Tech stack signals that indicate they have the problem (Salesforce + Outreach is a different buyer than HubSpot + Gmail).
  • Timing signals — what event in their world makes them likely to buy RIGHT NOW, not eventually.
AI application

Build me an ICP definition for a company that sells [X]. Include: headcount range, revenue range, funding stage, 3 tech stack signals that indicate they have the problem, and 5 trigger events that would make them likely to buy in the next 90 days.

The output of this prompt becomes the brief you hand to every AI tool in your campaign stack. Every tool — Apollo, Clay, Sales Navigator — gets this exact definition. Garbage ICP in means garbage list out.

02

What is the ONE problem you solve?

Not your top three value props. One problem. The most acute, most painful, most expensive problem your ICP has right now.

Elite reps make this decision before writing a single word of outreach because every message in the campaign will be built around it.

The test
Passes

“Companies scaling their SDR team past 10 reps consistently see ramp time blow past 90 days and it costs them a full quarter of quota production.”

Fails

“We help sales teams be more efficient.”

PrincipleCan you say it in one sentence that a prospect would nod at immediately? If not, you do not have a problem statement yet — you have a category.
03

What does your campaign need to achieve?

Not "book meetings." Specifically: how many meetings per week, from how large a list, over what time period?

These numbers tell you how much list you need, how many touches your sequence requires, and what reply rate you need to hit your goal.

Working-backwards example
  • Goal: 10 meetings per week.
  • Assumption: 5% of replies convert to meetings.
  • Assumption: 3% reply rate on cold outreach.
  • Math: 10 ÷ 0.05 = 200 replies per week.
  • Math: 200 ÷ 0.03 = 6,667 outreach touches per week.

Either your list needs to be massive, your reply rate needs to be higher than 3%, or your meeting goal needs to be adjusted.

PrincipleElite reps do this math before launching. Average reps launch and wonder why they are not hitting their meeting goal.
04

What does success look like at Day 7, 14, and 30?

A campaign without defined checkpoints cannot be managed.

Before launching, write down:

Checkpoints
Day 7
What open rate, reply rate, and meeting rate tells you the campaign is on track?
Day 14
What data point would cause you to pause and rewrite the messaging?
Day 30
What result justifies scaling this campaign? What result means you kill it and start over?
PrincipleThese are not guesses. They are commitments. Elite reps manage campaigns like data experiments, not like hope.