James Shields@scaling_shields
met a guy last week making $43,000/month sending cold emails to people who left 1-star reviews for his competitors
not joking
he scrapes trustpilot and g2 for every 1-star review in his niche
finds the persons linkedin
pulls their email
sends them one message:
"saw your review of [competitor]. we built [product] specifically because of complaints like yours. want to see it?"
reply rate: 11.4%
for context the average cold email reply rate is 0.3%
his is 38x higher
because rather than just emailing strangers, hes emailing people who are already pissed off and actively looking for an alternative
they JUST took time out of their day to write a paragraph about how much they hate the thing you replace
theyre literally the hottest lead on planet earth
and theyre free public information sitting on review sites
he showed me his process:
step 1: filter trustpilot for 1-star and 2-star reviews of top 3 competitors posted in last 90 days
step 2: copy the reviewers name into linkedin sales nav
step 3: pull email with apollo or instantly
step 4: send the email within 72 hours of them posting the review while theyre still mad
step 5: appointment setter calls every positive reply within 5 minutes
close rate on these calls: 41%
because the entire sales conversation is "what did they fuck up" and "heres how we do it differently"
literally no convincing or educating needed
no overcoming objections about whether they need the category
they already bought it once
they already know they need it
they just need it from someone who doesnt suck
last month he scraped 290 negative reviews
found emails for 203 of them
got 23 positive replies
booked 19 calls
closed 8 deals at $4,200 average contract value
$33,600 in revenue from reading complaints
the craziest part
three of his customers told him they were ABOUT to switch to a different competitor before he reached out
he intercepted them mid-churn
one guy said "i literally had the contract open in another tab when your email came in"
timing is everything
most people are cold emailing prospects who dont even know they have a problem yet
this guy is emailing people who just spent 20 minutes writing a essay about their problem on the internet
every 1-star review is someone announcing "i have budget, i have pain, and im shopping right now"
your competitors are generating your lead list for you
theyre spending $50K on ads to acquire a customer
that customer hates them
writes a review
and you email them for free and close them in one call
right now theres probably 200 people who reviewed your competitor in the last 60 days
theyre all reachable
theyre all in market
and theyre all ignored because everyone thinks cold email means emailing cold people
these people are on fire
go put it out
p.s. if you want us to setup a cold email system that books you 10-30 calls per month - DM me "COLD"
(you ONLY pay for qualified calls actually booked onto your calendar)
