RVNU #047: The Outbound Playbook for your 'outbound playbook'
Whether you are building or re-structuring an outbound strategy, avoid chaos and unlock predictable growth.
When SaaS companies hit $2–5M ARR, the story often sounds similar: the founders’ heroics and product-led inbound momentum got them there. But to triple revenue, they need to start building a repeatable outbound motion.
I’d like to go on record: Outbound growth isn’t about “turning on” prospecting; it’s a rewiring of how you engage the market. To do it right, founders must rethink who they sell to, how they educate buyers, and what they measure. Having guided several founders through this journey, here is the breakdown of critical elements and step-by-step guidance to get you there.
How are we defining “Outbound”
First, lets level set what we mean when we say “Outbound”. Outbound is not just a sequence of cold emails or SDR calls — it’s a company-wide growth motion. It means proactively identifying and reaching accounts that fit your ideal profile but haven’t raised their hand yet. It blends strategy (who to target), messaging (how to teach the problem), and execution (how to orchestrate outreach across channels).
Done right, outbound is a synthesis of data, curiosity, and repetition — a structured campaign to create demand where awareness doesn’t yet exist.
Where founders get it wrong and why is it so challenging?
At $2–5M ARR, inbound leads typically come from:
Existing networks and referrals
Product curiosity (organic demand)
Marketing SEO/Ad spend to targets with intent
Strong word-of-mouth and founder brand
This creates a false sense of market understanding. Founders assume they can take their current playbook and replicate it for outbound When they pivot to outbound, they now face prospects in earlier awareness stages — and that’s a totally different game.
If you are familiar with ‘The 5 Stages of Awareness’ is a simple framework popularized by Eugene Schwartz. The basic premise is that it’s not enough to have a great product—or service—to sell. You also need to meet the potential customer where they’re at, in their current frame of mind.
Outbound prospects typically sit in the “Unaware” or “Problem Aware” stages. Sellers must educate on the pain before they pitch.
The common outbound missteps
Feature dumping. Founders push product benefits too early instead of framing pain.
Over-hiring with no playbook. “We hired 20 SDRs” ≠ “We have outbound figured out.”
No message-market fit check. Outbound needs its own ICP validation cycle.
Lack of documentation. Without a playbook, scaling reps just scales chaos.
Unmeasured inputs. Reps can’t improve what isn’t logged or analyzed — vanity metrics abound.
Unrealistic expectations. Internal teams, Investors and Executives need to be realistic that results aren’t overnight.
5 steps to building Outbound (The RVNU Framework Lens)
Knowing that transitioning to outbound means re-verifying fundamentals before scaling tactics. Here is how we break it down at RVNU:
Step 1: Validate Your Outbound ICP
Outbound is doubling down on whats working. In our SaaS growth framework, crossing the growth chasm between Stage 8: Realize Value & 9: repeatability is a natural forcing function of ICP previously defined in Idea Market Fit. This is typically the point at which an outbound strategy gets introduced.
Perform internal customer analysis using employee size, industry, etc. to revalidate that what your ICP is for accounts, buyers personas and intent.
Talk to customers to get deeper qualitative insights on competitive wins and ROI metrics your product is delivering.
Step 2: Align Team & Messaging
Prepare your findings and map what needs to be built in order to align your current people, process and systems to anything that is changing [current state vs future state]
Map the outbound buyer journey to identify prospect touch-points, collateral needed to support sales process that differs from inbound.
Assess current team skill set: Don’t assume that reps know how to pivot from inbound to outbound. Do you have the right people in seat with the skill set to go outbound?
ProTip: When creating messaging. write a ChatGPT prompt to use your current inbound messaging and create messaging for each stage of the awareness funnel.
Step 3: Build Enablement Assets
New or existing reps need to know “what good looks like” when pivoting to outbound. This documentation includes:
Building Outbound Playbook: awareness messaging, discovery questions, battlecards, persona talk tracks, objection handling, multithread guidance made accessible for learning (Most of our customers use Notion)
Building CRM hygiene: enforce lead source tagging, call outcome tracking, and buyer-role mapping.
Step 4: Coach to playbook and assess risk
Outbound pipeline is rife with “happy ears.” Reps confuse interest for intent to buy. Steps are skipped, prospect ghosting happens mid-process and then you are left with an inflated pipeline.
Review sales calls weekly to assess pain discovery depth
Monitor stage progression, scrutinize exit criteria and ask about deal risk
Coach for multithreading and champion development
Step 5: Implement measurements discipline
Probably the most missed step in building (anything new) is defining “How will I know if this is a success?”
Decide how you will track outbound separately from inbound to measure ROI and plan future spend accurately.
Pro tips for CRM field tagging:
Align team to outbound revenue targets and back into the inputs needed to get to said targets by using benchmark metrics
Build and share report(s) or a dashboard(s) to monitor if you are on track or need to pivot (report on progress weekly along with other revenue metrics)
Final Thought
“Going outbound” isn’t a switch — it’s an organizational evolution. Founders who succeed approach it like launching a new product: they test, measure, and iterate before scaling. The RVNU framework exists to guide this journey with operational clarity and strategic rigor.
If you are looking to add an “Outbound Strategy” to your GTM motion, take the GTM Assessment here to see if you are ready and then book a time to chat with us - we can help.