The 3 biggest mistakes when scaling outbound
How to fix them + 1 bonus.
Read time: 4 min
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Today I'm gonna talk about the 3 biggest mistakes I keep seeing over and over at companies I've worked with, talked to, or advised.
These mistakes are killing your team's productivity and wasting money.
If you're planning to scale your outbound team, you better fix these issues first, otherwise, you're just throwing cash out the window.
BDRs usually spend between 20% and 50% of their day doing stuff that's not actually prospecting. Imagine telling your reps it's fine to only work half the week that's basically what's happening when you let them chase bad accounts, wrong phone numbers, or spend hours researching.
At Chili Piper, our team was wasting more than 2 hours every single day on tasks that didn't generate revenue (Non-RGAs).
So here are the top 3 mistakes you need to stop making right now:
The 3 biggest mistakes when scaling outbound
Mistake #1: Picking the Wrong Accounts
This one's huge. And no, I’m not talking about intent data or buying signals, that comes later. And actually, it's 3 mistakes in one:
Going after low-value accounts: If your BDRs chase customers with low lifetime value (LTV) or high churn rates
Letting reps pick their own accounts based on gut feeling: Reps aren't data scientists. They pick accounts they like or think are easy, not necessarily the best ones for the business.
Using only one data point (like headcount or revenue)
Here's what happens if you don't fix this:
Your revenue potential shrinks since you're chasing low-value customers.
Your customer acquisition cost (CAC) goes up, eating into profits.
Churn goes through the roof because you're signing customers who shouldn't have bought in the first place.
Everyone else in your go-to-market (GTM) team suffers:
SDRs waste their days chasing bad accounts.
AEs struggle to close deals and miss quotas.
Customer success teams lose sleep trying to retain unhappy customers.
How to fix it?
First off, stop letting your reps choose accounts manually. Instead:
Score your accounts using lifetime value (LTV), Propensity, and buying signals from your existing customers.
Use multiple data points for your business: job descriptions, tech stacks (tools like Builtwith or Sumble), data tools (ZoomInfo, Cognism), etc.
Automatically route scored accounts to your BDRs based on their capacity
Block accounts you'd never sell to anyway. For example:
At Chili Piper, we never target companies that don't use Salesforce or HubSpot.
Castordoc avoids government accounts or companies in countries that don't speak English or French.
Advanced:
Predictive scoring. You can build it internally with your data team or use tools like Forwrd.ai.
Mistake #2: Not investing enough in great outbound data
Most companies mess this up big time by:
Relying on just one provider for cell phone numbers, leading to low match rates.
Letting reps manually search for contact info across multiple tools.
Never validate and score if these numbers are even accurate.
The result?
Your sales team's productivity tanks because they're spending their days calling disconnected lines, wrong numbers, or chasing people who'll never pick up.
How do you fix this?
Use multiple data providers: Don't rely on just one source for phone numbers. Get at least two or three providers and test them against each other so you get better coverage and fewer overlaps.
Regularly validate your data: Make sure those phone numbers actually work, and track the source. Track call outcomes (call dispositions) to measure accuracy, is it a wrong number, or a disconnected line?
Clearly assign data management tasks: Your sales ops team should handle this, not your reps. If you don't have an ops person yet, hire a freelancer (call them a GTM engineer, sales ops specialist, whatever you like). Your reps should only do ONE manual thing here, marking the call outcome after each call to measure your data quality.
Mistake #3: Letting Reps Waste Time on Manual Research
Your BDRs shouldn't be spending hours researching prospects instead of actually prospecting. This is another huge productivity killer.
Impact:
Same as bad data, your reps waste time on non-revenue-generating activities (Non-RGAs), lowering overall sales efficiency.
How do you fix it?
Simple: automate research using tools like Clay with AI to accelerate those parts, then use AI to select what's the most relevant for your outbound messaging, and send it where your reps spend time (CRM or Sales Engagement Platform).
Those examples are specific for each company but here are a few examples:
If your prospect’s accounts have: Annual reports/10-K/10-Q/: use Perplexity
Selling to people active online, getting interviewed, use Perplexity
If your prospect’s account doesn't have their CEO in interviews, or annual reports, they still leave breadcrumbs online that you can use in your outbound messaging:
Restaurants: do they have a website? High traffic? low traffic?
Marketing agencies: what type of services do they offer?
Manufacturing: how many locations? number of products? How complex is their supply chain? Number of certifications?
Etc
Bonus: Mistake #4: Waiting too long to Start & scale outbound
Companies think outbound is like a magic switch they can flip whenever they're desperate for pipeline. But guess what? It doesn't work like that. Building a solid outbound engine takes real effort and time, usually at least 6 to 12 months.
Rippling made this exact mistake. Triple Whale and Owner.com did too. In fact, I talked to the two CROs at Triple Whale and Owner.com, on my podcast, and both of them said the same thing: if they could go back in time, they'd invest in outbound way earlier.
So here's my advice: If you think you'll need outbound next year, don't wait until next year. Start right now, today. Give yourself at least 9-12 months to build it properly.
Bottom line: launch outbound before you need it, not after.
That's it. Fix these mistakes now before scaling your team.
Let's get cooking!
See you in the next newsletter.
👨🍳 Elric
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