MARK ZIDES
MARK ZIDES
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Mark builds and proves the outbound motion himself, then staffs it: hired into your company, or run by a vendor briefed against your playbook. The engine stays yours either way.
The offer
Three things, in this order: a prospecting motion Mark builds and proves by running it himself, the people to staff it hired against a scorecard drawn from what worked, and a handover that leaves the playbook, the data and the pipeline inside your company.
Target list, message, sequences and qualification, tested by Mark in live conversations before a single person is recruited against it.
Hired into your company against a scorecard built from the motion, or a vendor briefed and managed to run your playbook rather than theirs.
Everything in your CRM, your documents and your team. The engagement is designed to end, and the exit criterion is written at the start.
The deliverables
Seven artefacts, all of them yours from the day they are written. If a vendor cannot hand you this list at the end of an engagement, you rented activity rather than building a function.
Accounts worth a conversation, with the disqualifiers that keep the list small and the reasons each segment is in or out.
The opening lines, the argument and the objection handling that earned replies, plus the versions that did not and why.
Channel mix, touch count and spacing, built so persistence reads as diligence rather than nuisance.
What has to be true before a meeting is booked, written into your CRM as stage criteria rather than living in a handbook.
What travels to the AE, who owns the moment, and what happens to a meeting the AE rejects.
What good looks like in the role, used to hire, onboard and manage performance afterwards.
Meetings held rather than booked, opportunity conversion and pipeline created per rep, in one view.
The method
Five moves, always in this order, because each one is only testable once the one before it is settled. This is the part most engagements skip, which is why they end up buying seats to push volume through a motion that was never proven.
Built from the deals you have actually won, then cut until it excludes most of the market. Disqualifiers written down.
Output: target list and ICPThe problem in the buyer’s words, the proof, and the reason to reply this week rather than next quarter.
Output: messaging setMark runs the outreach himself. Versions that do not earn replies are killed rather than scaled.
Output: what actually worksQualification criteria agreed with the AEs who will receive the meetings, then configured in the CRM.
Output: qualification and handoffScorecard drawn from the proven motion, then hiring into your company or briefing a vendor against it.
Output: the team, and the handoverThe shape
The motion is identical in all three. What changes is who employs the people and where the learning accumulates, and that decision is made with evidence rather than in advance.
Mark writes the scorecard, sits the interviews and onboards the first hires into the motion he built. Slower to start, everything retained.
Most retainedA vendor supplies the seats and runs your sequences, your qualification bar and your CRM. Mark briefs and manages them to it.
Fastest to scaleHe keeps carrying the outreach while hiring runs in parallel, so pipeline does not pause during the search.
No gap in outputThe split
An engagement that cannot say this plainly turns into a monthly argument about scope. This is the division of labour from week one, and it is written into the agreement rather than assumed.
The ramp
Be suspicious of anyone promising pipeline in week one. Early effort goes into building and testing; pipeline becomes the output once the argument survives contact with real buyers.
Left: share of effort going into building and proving the motion. Right: share producing pipeline. The phases move at the pace the replies allow, not on a schedule agreed in advance.
The fit
Four symptoms, four different answers. Only one of them is solved by adding people, and buying seats for a motion problem is the most expensive mistake in this category.
Your AEs have gaps in the calendar and the meetings they do get convert
Right engagement. The motion works and the constraint is capacity, so proving it quickly and staffing it is exactly the work.
The calendar is full and the pipeline is not
Right engagement, wrong assumption. The qualification bar is the fix, and more seats would make the problem larger.
Replies are rare and mostly negative
Start here anyway, but expect the first weeks to be message work. Sending more of something that is not landing burns a list you cannot re-approach for a year.
Deals stall after the first meeting
Wrong engagement. The problem is downstream of prospecting, and sales consulting is the cheaper fix.
The record
Including a nine-figure sale of a firm built from zero, so the motion being designed is one he has had to make work with his own money at stake.
Procurement, security review and buying committees are the normal case rather than the exception, which is what makes qualification criteria realistic.
Across 35+ years as founder, operator and Big Four consultant at Deloitte, PwC and EY.
Rewired Leadership and The #PACE Process, and Beyond the Boardroom. The material is taught in public, which is why it is written to be handed over.
FAQ ( Here to Help )
Paying an outside team to do sales development: building the target list, running outreach and booking qualified meetings for your closers. It covers the top of the funnel only. Everything from the first meeting onward stays with your own sales team.
A prospecting motion that is proven before anyone is hired into it: the target list and its disqualifiers, the messaging that earned replies, the sequences, the qualification bar written into your CRM, the handoff to your AEs, and the scorecard used to hire against it.
He proves the motion by carrying conversations himself, then either hires SDRs into your company or helps you brief and select a vendor to run it. Either way the playbook, the data and the learning stay on your side.
Scope follows what is broken. A motion that needs designing from nothing costs more than one that needs a qualification bar and a handoff. It is set on the first call, once the constraint is named, and never quoted before.
The first phase is build rather than pipeline, because volume through an unqualified motion produces meetings your AEs learn to ignore. Pipeline becomes the output once the argument has been tested against real replies.
Then this is usually a motion problem rather than a capacity one. The same work applies to the people you already employ, and it is cheaper than hiring more of them into a process that is not converting.
Your team runs the motion, or a vendor runs it to your playbook rather than their own. The exit criterion is a full cycle of qualified meetings produced without Mark in it.
The first call
Thirty minutes on whether you are short of prospecting capacity or short of a prospecting motion. One is solved by hiring; the other gets worse with every hire.