Steven Wagner Founder of 4 Companies (3 SaaS 1 B2C Brand)

I've done this for 10 years so I speak from experience.
1. Hire a firm not an individual (overseas) - firms have controls and tools that you ensure your work is done. Workers can "disappear" unexpectedly.
2. Use a screen recorder to narrate and screen share your process.
3. Document in Google that you share with them
4. Establish daily deliverables.
5. Start basic - like find emails before getting into more advanced skills.
6. If you've never done it - don't expect an outsourcer to immediately know or outperform you.
7. Have a daily task sheet for them.
8. Always ask them to check in after doing a % of the project - so it doesn't go off task.
9. Buy great tools for them to use to accomplish the tasks. Don't give them cheap tools and expect them to be an all star.
10. Test any assignment with 2 different outsourcers to establish quality and timing comparisons.

If you want to do this long term, hire a firm not a single outsourcer. It is rule #1 for a reason.

Cold emailing can be productive. It works in a number of ways for sales, marketing, joint ventures, pr and more. Just don't expect it to close any deals immediately from it.

The critical points to improve your emails:
1. Who you are targeting - your ideal client (title, firm, revenue size, location, etc.) the more time you spend getting this right the better performance.
2. The volume - how many people are in your sweet spot.
3. The cadence - how often you keep contacting them. Don't expect 1 email to do much. 3-4 follow up emails is ideal.
4. The messaging - If it is all about you than you should look at writing emails about them and their needs first.

I have seen cold emails average 10% response rate - people saying yes, no or go to hell. Up to 40% for great messaging, spot on contacts and the right cadence.

As for "conversion" there are many factors that will impact you. If your product is brand new with no social proof than your responses will be much lower than an established firm.

Best of luck.

I have dealt with this before. I recommend finding out how much the acquirer pays to acquire customers, users or accounts today. CPCA- cost per customer acquired

Also ascertain how much a client, user or account is worth to them. LTV - long term value

From these metrics you can put some value to what you have. Then trend that out over 3-5 yr period.

The key is to make the buyer part of the valuation. Don't go off and do this and come back with a value. They need to be a part of it for your valuation to be accepted. There are no absolutes in this.

From my back of a napkin calculations that is what Facebook did to buy Instagram.

There are a great number of templates to engage the right person. There are 2 things that really impact performance:
1. The right list - whom you're contacting
2. Consistency - use some BASIC email automation tool to do consistent calling/emailing/mailing

Linkedin is a very effective tool to build a list.
Too few people consistently contact the right people enough to get results.

For SMB, I would look at Radiant. It has a very deep database that you can filter for the type of stores you are looking for. Then you should reach out to the owner or buyer.

You should reconsider your needs. If you're making this product, no one besides yourself can market it and sell it better than you. After you get 10 paying customers can you recruit or vet the right sales person.