Part I · The job · Chapter 2
The pipeline machine
Five jobs every outbound system does, the handoffs where it leaks, and the arithmetic of a funnel.
10 min read
Strip away the tool names and every outbound system does the same five jobs in order. Knowing them gives you a map: when results drop, you can ask which job failed instead of tweaking everything at once.
What you'll take away
- 01Five jobs every outbound system performs, independent of tools.
- 02Why the joins between jobs, not the jobs themselves, cause most failures.
- 03How to do funnel arithmetic, and why small losses compound.
- 04The stage names sales and marketing use, so you speak their language.
Five jobs every outbound system does
| Job | The question it answers | Typical tools today |
|---|---|---|
| Who | Which companies and people should we contact at all? | Company databases, LinkedIn searches, scrapers, enrichment tools |
| Why now | Who is most likely to care this month? | Funding and hiring feeds, website visitor data, job-change tracking |
| Reach | How do we get a relevant message in front of them? | Sending platforms, LinkedIn tools, phone dialers |
| Reply | When someone answers, does the right person act on it fast? | Inbox management, routing, alerts in Slack |
| Record | Is every account, contact and conversation captured accurately? | The CRM, plus syncs from every other tool |
Where it leaks: the joins
Each of the five jobs is usually handled by a capable tool. Problems appear where one tool hands work to the next. A list is enriched but the export to the sending tool silently drops a column. A prospect replies, but the reply sits in a shared inbox over the weekend. A meeting is booked, but nobody logs where the lead came from, so outbound gets no credit and loses its budget.
- For every join, know what is passed, how often, and how you would notice if it stopped.
- Count records on both sides of each join every day. Matching counts are the cheapest monitoring there is.
- Give each join an owner. A join everyone assumes someone else watches is a join nobody watches.
Boxes rarely break. The lines between them do.
Funnel arithmetic
Outbound is a chain of percentages, and percentages multiply. Losing a third at one step and a tenth at the next does not lose four tenths in total. It compounds. That is why improving an early stage often beats polishing the last one.
Read the example as a set of levers. Finding verified contacts for 85% of accounts instead of 70% adds 300 contacts and, at the same rates, about five more meetings. That usually comes from a better data source or waterfall, with no new copywriting at all. Improving reply rate from 5% to 6% adds a similar amount. Knowing which lever is cheapest to pull this month is a core GTM engineering judgment.
Shared words for stages
Sales and marketing teams describe a buyer's journey in stages. The exact definitions vary between companies, and writing them down precisely is part of the job, but the common shape is:
| Stage | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Lead | A person we know about and can contact |
| Marketing-qualified lead (MQL) | Fits the profile or has shown interest; marketing thinks they're worth passing on |
| Sales-qualified lead (SQL) | Sales has looked and agrees they're worth a real conversation |
| Opportunity | An active deal with an estimated value |
| Closed won / closed lost | The outcome |
Ask how your company defines each one, and who decides when a lead moves. Disagreements between sales and marketing about lead quality usually turn out to be disagreements about these definitions.
Draw it before you build it
- 1
Draw the five jobs for your company
One box each, with the source of data and the tool, even if the tool is 'a person with a spreadsheet'. - 2
Draw the joins
What moves between boxes, how often, and how you'll know if it stops. - 3
Put today's numbers on it
Even rough ones. Where is the biggest drop? - 4
Pick one leak to fix
Fix the biggest, cheapest leak first, and measure again.
Try it
Find the cheapest lever
Last month your team targeted 3,000 accounts. You found verified contacts for 1,800. 15% of emails went to spam or bounced. 4% of delivered emails got replies, and 30% of replies became meetings. The sales director wants a new copywriter.
Work out the meetings, then estimate the effect of each of these: verified contacts for 2,400 accounts; spam and bounce down to 5%; reply rate up to 5%.
Write your answer down first, then reveal the worked answerWorked answer
Today: 1,800 × 0.85 delivered = 1,530; × 4% = about 61 replies; × 30% = about 18 meetings.
More contacts: 2,400 × 0.85 × 4% × 30% ≈ 24 meetings (+6).
Better deliverability: 1,800 × 0.95 × 4% × 30% ≈ 21 meetings (+3).
Better copy: 1,800 × 0.85 × 5% × 30% ≈ 23 meetings (+5).
The contact-coverage fix and the copy fix are similar in size. Coverage is usually cheaper and more certain, and it also makes better copy worth more later. A strong answer also notes that 15% spam or bounce is a warning sign that will get worse if ignored.