How to "Personalize" Outbound at Scale

The Account System

Sep 02, 2025

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Everyone's been sold the same lie:

“Spend more time personalizing each email to get better results.”

Here’s what actually happens:

your SDRs waste 5 minutes per prospect digging through LinkedIn, find nothing useful for 90% of them, and end up defaulting back to generic templates.

The truth?

Personalization is a 1:1 game. You can’t scale it.

Relevance is different. Relevance multiplies.

One account insight fuels 10+ conversations.
One company initiative speaks to every stakeholder.
One problem resonates across the whole buying committee.

The best SDR teams have already made this shift. They’re booking more meetings with less research time.

Stop personalizing for people.

Start building relevance for accounts using an Account-Based System.

How to Scale Relevant Outbound

The Account System

What’s an Account System in outbound?

Start with company-level insights first, then apply them to the prospects inside the account: Adapt to Above the Line and Below the Line prospects.

If your product touches multiple teams, you go both horizontal and vertical inside the account, a multithreaded approach, not just single-thread.

With this, it’s faster to spot real initiatives or challenges for each account, then build a strong POV (point of view) around how you can help. That makes your outbound relevant at scale.

Example strategy:

Identify company strategic initiatives/pain points in under 10 minutes → create a strong POV → reuse insights across multiple prospects in the same account.

Most teams are still personalizing, wasting hours chasing weak LinkedIn breadcrumbs for each lead. Pipeline doesn’t come from surface-level personalization. It comes from account-level insights and a POV that speaks to real problems across the buying committee.

Here are different approach examples

CEO interviewed on a podcast → use it to reach their direct reports.
CRO just got hired → leverage with the CEO and front-line sales managers.
Bottom-up: talk to end-users about current challenges/tools → use that with front-line managers → Economic buyer.
VP of CS just hired 2 CSMs → name-drop.
Ask for referrals inside the account.

With that, you’ve got (almost) infinite ways to outbound an account. Because if the prospects you’re chasing aren’t active on LinkedIn, you’re just wasting time.

Why This Works

Lead-based approach:

100 prospects × 5 min research = 500 minutes
90% have no useful intel online
1% reply rate = 1 meetings

Account-based approach:

20 accounts × 10 min research = 200 minutes
100% have company-level signals
6-8% reply rate = 6-8 meetings

Same list. More meetings. 60% less research time.

And in 2025, with tools like n8n, Clay or AI-driven solutions make this faster and scalable, even if your prospect accounts aren’t active on LinkedIn.

“But does this work in SMB and Mid-Market?”

Yes. It works there too, especially if you use digital breadcrumbs (online signals that show account struggles).

Example: Owner.com sells to small, mom-and-pop restaurants. For single-location restaurants, they only have one contact for most accounts.

They adapt the talk track by segment:

Restaurant has a website + uses Uber Eats/DoorDash → focus on the pain of 3rd-party apps (30% revenue cut, no customer data).
Restaurant has a website + no delivery apps or offering delivery → focus on educating them about missed revenue opportunities.

So the personalization isn’t about the individual owner, it’s about the maturity of the restaurant.

Your SDRs are wasting hours researching prospects with zero insights.

Give them this system, now you can scale relevant outbound.

Have you tried this? What’s your take?

How to "Personalize" Outbound at Scale

The Account System

How to Scale Relevant Outbound

The Account System

Why This Works

“But does this work in SMB and Mid-Market?”

Discussion about this post