Brought to you by: Clarify
5 demos booked overnight. Outbound from the CRM.
A Clarify customer asked it to re-engage 3-month-cold contacts. It built the campaign from CRM context: 186 emails, 50%+ opens, 5 demos.
I believe outbound can create demand.
A relevant insight can help a buyer recognise a problem or opportunity they hadn’t considered, understand why it matters and decide to do something about it.
A lot of cold outreach depends on that work already being done. It follows some version of:
Little or no research → product pitch → “Interested in learning more?”
That approach relies heavily on reaching someone who already recognises the problem and wants to solve it. When the buyer isn’t looking, you need to give them a reason to reconsider their current situation.
Great outbound brings the buyer information that changes how they see a problem, an opportunity or their own business.
Today, we’ll unpack one of the best examples I’ve seen recently:
Sahil Mansuri, then a Glassdoor rep and later the CEO of Bravado, did exactly that. He created a nine-page report that helped him reach Facebook’s executive team, meet Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, and win the account.
We’ll break down:
The exact approach he used to book the meeting
Why it earned the attention of Facebook’s executive team
How you can recreate the principle (even if you don’t sell an HR product)
P.S. I recently came across the story in this post from Ian Koniak.
1. How he booked the meeting with Facebook (that lead to a closed won)
Before Sahil joined Glassdoor, the company had spent 3 years trying to book a meeting with Facebook. Their talent leadership kept giving the same answer: not interested.
When Sahil took over the account, he looked through Facebook’s employee data on Glassdoor for patterns that might matter to its leadership. He analyzed:
Employee reviews and sentiment
Mark Zuckerberg’s CEO approval rating
Differences between headquarters and remote employees
Differences between product managers and engineers
Salary ranges
Comparisons with Google, Microsoft and Amazon
The language employees used to describe Facebook
He turned the findings into a nine-page report that revealed several meaningful patterns:
Employees at headquarters rated Zuckerberg higher than remote employees did.
Product managers rated him lower than engineers did.
The report compared Facebook’s reputation as an employer and its compensation with those of companies competing for the same talent.
From this, Sahil formed a business hypothesis:
How different groups of employees publicly described Facebook could be affecting its employer brand, and its ability to recruit technical talent.
That connected the data to an executive priority: attracting and retaining the people Facebook needed to grow (in a competitive environment).
Sahil sent the report to Sheryl Sandberg with the subject line:
Mark’s approval rating on Glassdoor
He gave Facebook’s executives new information about their talent market and offered to discuss the findings.
The report circulated among the executive team, led to conversations with Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, and became part of Facebook’s weekly executive reporting. It also helped Glassdoor close a major deal.
Sahil later used the same approach to book a meeting with Costco’s former CEO, James Sinegal.
2. Why this is great outbound
This nine-page report worked for 3 reasons.
2.1. The research produced an original insight
Most account research gathers facts the company already knows: it’s hiring, opening an office or raising funding. These facts can make an email more relevant, but they rarely teach the buyer anything.
Sahil analyzed employee reviews by role and location, then compared Facebook with the companies competing for the same talent. This revealed patterns that individual reviews couldn’t show.
The process looked like this:
Relevant data → analysis → meaningful pattern → business hypothesis
Facebook could access the reviews. The value came from uncovering how different groups experienced and publicly represented the company.
That’s the standard I want to apply to outbound: what can the buyer learn from the work we’ve done?
2.2. He connected the findings to a reason to act
Facebook had repeatedly declined Glassdoor’s outreach. Sahil’s analysis gave its executives a specific question to explore about recruiting.
This is how I think outbound can create demand. A buyer sees evidence of something that could affect a priority, investigates it and may decide it needs addressing. That can create a buying process where there wasn’t one before.
Kurt Lewin’s model of change calls the first stage “unfreezing”: recognising why the current situation may need to change. Many outbound messages jump straight to asking someone to evaluate a product.
Sahil gave Facebook a reason to examine its situation first. The findings didn’t establish that employee sentiment was hurting recruiting; Facebook would need internal data to assess that. They made the question worth discussing.
2.3. Facebook could see how Glassdoor’s data might help
The report showed Facebook how it could use employee feedback to understand its reputation as an employer. It also gave the team a chance to assess Sahil’s work before evaluating the product.
When choosing your own analysis, focus on a question your company can help the buyer investigate or address. You want a useful conversation that can lead to work you actually do.
3. How you can replicate this
Suppose you sell customer experience software that collects, routes and analyses feedback. You’re targeting the operations or customer experience director of a hotel chain, with one question:
Are guests reporting different problems at newly opened hotels compared with established properties?
Step 1: Gather evidence you can compare
Review Google Maps feedback across locations and verify which hotels opened recently. Choose a defined period and record each review’s date, property, rating and relevant comments.
For other businesses, sources could include:
Strategy and investment: Annual reports, earnings calls, executive interviews and job openings.
Employee and customer experience: Reviews, public complaints and feedback you have permission to use.
Operations and competition: Locations, contract awards, pricing, product pages and filings.
The evidence available determines what you can build. Enough account data supports a company-specific analysis. With useful peer data, you could create a segment benchmark, while making clear that those patterns may not apply to the target. If neither provides enough evidence, speak with people at the company before investing in an analysis.
Step 2: Find a pattern and explain why it could matter
Group the hotel reviews by stage of the guest experience: booking, arrival, waiting, service, room quality and issue resolution.
Compare how often each theme appears and its share of all reviews at each property. Use consistent categories and comparable periods, show sample sizes, and treat small samples cautiously. Remember that public reviews only reflect guests who chose to post.
Suppose arrival and check-in complaints appear disproportionately at three recently opened hotels, while feedback on rooms and staff remains positive.
That gives the operations team a specific area to investigate. A useful question would be:
Do your internal complaints show the same concentration around arrival at these three hotels, and do those properties share a check-in process?
The reviews alone won’t tell you whether staffing, systems, training or another factor explains the complaints. Any effect on repeat bookings or revenue would need separate evidence.
If the chain has announced further openings, ask whether those properties will use the same process. That verified expansion gives the team a reason to investigate before repeating it elsewhere.
Step 3: Share a brief the buyer can use
Put the analysis into one page or a mini report like Sahil:
Scope: Properties, sources, dates and review counts.
Comparison: Themes by location, showing counts and proportions.
Evidence: Linked review excerpts, including relevant positive feedback.
Interpretation: What the pattern could mean, its limitations and the question to investigate.
Lead your outreach with the finding:
Arrival and check-in complaints stood out at three of your recently opened hotels when I compared guest reviews across your locations. I’ve put the findings and examples into a one-page brief. Would it be useful to compare this with what your team is seeing internally?
If the buyer wants to investigate, explain how your software could help collect feedback, route recurring complaints to the responsible managers and track whether the changes they make improve the guest experience.
Hope you found this helpful.
The next time you research an account, ask: what could we help this buyer see that would give them a reason to act?
That’s the question I’m taking into my own outreach to CROs and CMOs, and the outbound I build for my customers.
Start with a priority they care about. Look for evidence you can analyse. Bring them a finding worth investigating and show how you can help if they decide to address it.
That’s how outbound can create demand.
Elric
I’m now turning those ideas into an AI-assisted workflow for my own prospecting. I’ll test it on real accounts, refine it until I’m happy with the results, and then share the finished workflow inside the future Outbound Kitchen membership.
If you want to know when it opens, join the waitlist.
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