Hey every­one out there! I am Ethan Bloom­field and I am BACK! 

Some of you know me; oth­ers might not. I’m going to give you a lit­tle back­ground before I explain why sales has nev­er been hard­er than it is now in recruit­ment adver­tis­ing. You’ll notice I’m writ­ing this like a con­ver­sa­tion, not loaded with cor­po­rate jar­gon, because that’s where most sales and mar­ket­ing fail. We lose our authen­tic­i­ty. I’m bring­ing it back.

Quick Back­ground on Me…

I live in Cos­ta Rica and have for the past 6 and half years. I’ve been in HR/TA tech since 2003 when I was look­ing to escape the dot-com bub­ble. I stum­bled into a com­pa­ny doing hir­ing assess­ments (HRD Press) and thought, “Why not?” The rea­sons? A four-minute com­mute, min­i­mal trav­el, and no dress code. The job offered about half of what I earned dur­ing my worst career years, but I want­ed a change. Turns out, it defined the rest of my career. 

At HRD, we built an ATS with assess­ments built in (Job­Tar­get was our part­ner back then) and saw suc­cess with over 200 instal­la­tions. We part­nered with Mon­ster and Career­Builder as well, so users could auto-post to their sites and any of Job­Tar­get’s niche sites. The rest? A bit more mod­ern his­to­ry:

• 2006: Joined Job­Tar­get to build OneClick, a com­peti­tor to eQuest and Arbi­ta, grow­ing from 10 to 100+ employ­ees and gain­ing a rep­u­ta­tion (most­ly good!) in the indus­try.
• 2012: Got recruit­ed by ZipRecruiter to grow ZipAlerts (when the team was under 20 peo­ple) and stayed for three years lead­ing sales biz dev and hav­ing a hand in prod­uct. Left when the team was 250 strong.
• 2015: Launched VitalFew with ZipRecruiter as my first client and worked with about 30 oth­ers in the space.
• 2016: Found­ed a sales automa­tion plat­form, Outbound.ai (it worked… but did­n’t last).
• 2018: Helped Truck­er­sRe­port 8X their MRR over a few years.
• 2022: Returned to Job­Tar­get as an inter­nal con­sul­tant.
• Now: I’m back con­sult­ing with VitalFew and work­ing with some real­ly inter­est­ing folks in this space.

I know that so far this sounds a bit self-pro­mo­tion­al, but remem­ber: Authen­tic­i­ty is every­thing.

Alright, let’s talk about sales.

READER NOTE: I nev­er use AI to write my con­tent unless I am mak­ing a point about AI…but I do ask for tips and edits after I have writ­ten the piece. This keeps me authen­tic (read on for more on that) but takes advan­tage of great tech­nol­o­gy. This is the essence of today’s chat. 

Those of us who have been in sales in this indus­try for a while have seen the rise of amaz­ing sales automa­tion—cadence-based email, calls, social touch­es, and applied data-dri­ven matri­ces. We have used tools like local pres­ence dial­ing (when you get a call from your home area code that’s real­ly from Cal­i­for­nia) and many oth­ers to cre­ate mas­sive vol­ume and automa­tion in our out­reach attempts.

Most impor­tant­ly, we taught our sales­peo­ple that they did­n’t need to know much about a prospect before reach­ing out—volume always wins. Build tem­plates and process, push the go but­ton and mon­ey comes out of the oth­er side. The premise was: 70–90% of your out­reach will go unan­swered, so just get that inter­ac­tion going, and you can learn about them lat­er. The math worked, and for a while, it was good math.

But Here’s the Prob­lem.

In the past 3‑ish years, the mar­ket wised up. We were all using the same tools and tac­tics, and buy­ers got flood­ed with calls, emails, and con­nec­tion requests from peo­ple say­ing things like, “I’m not sure if we’re a good fit, but here’s what I do…” And peo­ple like me as a sales leader and con­sul­tant feel like we have hurt sales strat­e­gy by help­ing every­one do the same thing (sor­ry!). Even ear­ly team mem­bers at uni­corn Outreach.io, one of my go-to tools, have apol­o­gized for “ruin­ing sales” and are intro­duc­ing new solu­tions.

We’ve lost all authen­tic­i­ty, bring­ing the wrong ideas to the wrong peo­ple at the wrong time—just try­ing to hit our mar­ket­ing-based or SaaS-based met­rics. Prospects can see auto­mat­ed cadences a mile away. Mean­while, cell phones and email providers are doing every­thing to block these mes­sages, and reg­u­la­tions like GDPR are mak­ing it tougher.

The Solu­tion? Authen­tic­i­ty.

To stand out, we must adopt a more gen­uine approach. It does­n’t mean throw­ing out tech­nol­o­gy and automation—it means doing much, much bet­ter.

My most recent LinkedIn mes­sage (I was all for the pub­lic sham­ing, but Julie said no.):

• “Jen­ny from Sales” does­n’t seem to know any­thing about me—yet mes­saged me on LinkedIn, where its easy see what I’m work­ing on.
• “Jen­ny from Sales” men­tions XYZ Com­pa­ny (nev­er  even heard of them), noth­ing about how they do what they do, who they work with and ZERO about me and my busi­ness.
• The approach is all about vol­ume con­nec­tions, hop­ing some­one clicks the links in the mes­sage. 

#delete.

A more authen­tic mes­sage might go some­thing like:

“Hey Ethan! I saw you’re work­ing on some cool projects like vitalfew.ai, Aspen Tech Labs, and Job­Tar­get. In my work at Think­FISH, I’m actu­al­ly work­ing with XYZ Start­up, and I think they have a lot in com­mon with you. Before I ask for any of your time, are any of your projects in need of fund­ing? I help clients find investors. If that’s not a need for you, no problem—if it is, let’s chat?”

Pro Tip: if they say, “No, thanks,” move on. You’ve giv­en them what they need to check you out. No need to push for the meet­ing.

It’s simple—stop talk­ing about what you want and start talk­ing about what I might want.

5 Things You and Your Team Can Do Right Now to Improve Results

1. Use web­site de-anonymiza­tion tools: Tools  like RB2B.com can try to ID a vis­i­tor, then send you their LinkedIn pro­file if it match­es. DO NOT say, “I saw you vis­it­ed my site.” Just con­nect and inter­act on LinkedIn nat­u­ral­ly.
2. Get bet­ter cus­tomer data: Many of us have com­plaints about Apol­lo and Zoom­In­fo. Try some­thing new like Clay.com—a data mar­ket­place with clever AI and a dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­el that might give you bet­ter, more accu­rate data and more insights for actu­al­ly speak­ing to prospects with knowl­edge. 
3. Lever­age sales sig­nals: Com­pa­nies like Aspen Tech Labs scrape job data and pro­vide insights. My favorite exam­ple? They spot­ted Tes­la remov­ing all jobs from their careers page. Sev­en days lat­er, Tes­la had lay­offs. Imag­ine send­ing a hor­ri­bly ill timed tem­plat­ed email to Tes­la’s HR say­ing, “Hey, you should adver­tise your open­ings with us.”? Ooops…
4. Max­i­mize LinkedIn: LinkedIn has two types of pow­er users—salespeople and recruiters. If you’re in TA tech or recruit­ment adver­tis­ing, your team should be there all day, every day. Post authen­tic con­tent, com­ment on oth­ers, make con­nec­tions, and share insights. But most of all be you. We can talk more about why Gen Z thinks we are cringey and why LinkedIn looks like Face­book for old timers (fun­ny since Face­book is like Insta­gram for old timers!)
5. Work with a sales expert to revamp your process: This isn’t about ditch­ing automation—it’s about mak­ing it work authen­ti­cal­ly. (Yes, I’m plug­ging myself here, but you don’t have to use me. Find some­one who gets it!)

Well, Julie said I had 600 words, and I’m way over. If you want more insights or just to chat about your expe­ri­ences, reach out. I also accept 99.5% of LinkedIn con­nec­tion requests. If you read all of this I doubt you are in the .5% that I reject 😉 

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