Show value before asking for anything—send prospects actual results using your product, not pitches about what it could do
Ibby's evolution in outbound: Early days (2022) worked with credibility signals, mission, gift cards—got 8-10% response. Today's AI-saturated market needs more. New approach: Instead of pitching 'we can help you find sales leads on Reddit,' Ibby uses Cotera to build a Reddit monitoring agent and sends prospects 5 actual Reddit threads from the last week showing people discussing their pain points. He's not promising value; he's delivering it before the first call. This proves the product works, saves them time immediately, and makes the pitch ('want more of this?') trivial. In saturated markets, you can't talk about value—you have to demonstrate it upfront. Let your product do the selling by solving their problem before they've committed to anything.
When to use
Use this when selling products that can quickly generate value for prospects. Especially powerful for tools, automation, data products where you can run the tool FOR them and send results. Instead of 'book a demo to see how we can help,' send them actual outputs: leads, research, analysis, competitive intelligence. Works best when your product can produce value without implementation/onboarding.
Don't do this
Generic outbound with promises ('we can increase your revenue by X%') or demo requests ('let me show you how it works'). In 2024+, everyone is getting pitched AI tools, automation, analytics—showing beats telling. Or using this tactic with products that can't generate standalone value without full implementation.
3 Founders Who Did This
Instead of pitching AI agents to sales teams, built Reddit monitoring agents that sent prospects actual leads—5 Reddit threads from last week where people discussed their pain points. Sent value first, pitch second. 'Here are leads. Want more?'
Showed prospects the value of interactive demos by creating personalized demos of their own product updates, demonstrating results before asking for anything
Spent hour per prospect creating personalized Loom videos and built Chrome extension showing CommandBar working on prospect's own website rather than generic demos