Video summary

My Exact Prospecting Process That Got Me To President's Club 3X (Live Screenshare)

Main summary

Key takeaways

Business

Core idea: prospecting as a time-boxed, account-segmented system

Charlie Johnson explains how she builds pipeline by:

  • Splitting her territory into 3 account segments
  • Using different research + outreach motions per segment
  • Orchestrating everything through calendared execution blocks, so prospecting doesn’t get displaced by selling/demos/ops

Territory segmentation framework (3 buckets)

Signals (≈50% of time)

Targets accounts with high familiarity / warm intent, such as:

  • Previously discussed opportunities
  • Closed-lost deals
  • Prospects who follow/engage on LinkedIn
  • Prior usage at a previous company

Research time: ~5–15 minutes per account (varies by tier within signals)

Tier Ones (≈20%–35% of time; she cites 35%)

  • Largest strategic accounts that can hit her quarter/number
  • Often require longer cycles
  • She expects to “lose it a few times before you win it”

Research time: 30+ minutes, ongoing

Volume / Industry Plays (≈15% of time)

  • A larger set of accounts targeted via industry-level themes and patterns

Research time: ~2–5 minutes per account Managed with SDR support to ensure meeting volume

High-level capacity examples

  • Territory size: ~100 accounts
  • Tier one count: ~20 accounts
  • She avoids most “tier three” accounts unless they fit a volume campaign theme

Process by segment (what she does, concretely)

1) Signals: leverage familiarity + closed-lost intel

What’s included (signals list)

She maintains a spreadsheet of closed-lost opportunities with:

  • Company + person + title
  • Old notes
  • LinkedIn URL (for quick re-research)
  • Phone number for calling

Primary motion

  • Calls (often) + follow-up email
  • SDR can also call from the same dataset if there’s “spare” time

Call script style (example)

  • Reference prior conversation
  • Reference competitor shift
  • Add a timely security/recovery angle

Example structure:

  • “We spoke to you last year… moving to cloud… security/protection concerns”
  • Connect to a current identity recovery / cyber incident implication:
    • Cloud auth via Entra
    • Identity layer rebuild can take 1–2 weeks
  • Ask for time to discuss now:
    • “Does it make sense to speak/call back again?”

Strategic twist: “don’t overengineer the pitch”

She says she doesn’t over-prep—she calls “naturally.”

She uses trend spotting from:

  • what she hears
  • major public incidents (e.g., M&S attack, Jaguar Land Rover offline impact) to anchor credibility.

Signals expansion (after closed-lost list is exhausted)

Use Sales Navigator / TeamLink intro filtering:

  • Find connections that are “connected with people at my target company”
  • Use the bridge to message the mutual connection and request an intro or send a draft
Example micro-message
  • “Nice to meet you— I saw you’re connected to [person]. Do you know them well?”
    • If yes: ask them to message with a draft she provides
    • If no: still offer to send a more cold-oriented draft

2) Tier Ones: deeper account research + multi-channel access

Tier ones are long-cycle strategic accounts requiring:

  • Heavy research
  • Partner/channel intel
  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Highly credible messaging based on triggers

Tier one research inputs (specific)

  • Annual report + hiring + news + standard research
  • Plus: how the customer makes money
    • Downtime impact logic (e.g., if Salesforce is down, business loss is huge)
  • Use AI tools (she mentions ChatGPT / Claude) to extract insights from documentation

“Detective work” examples

If a target stakeholder is hard to reach:

  • Find a colleague who shares LinkedIn connections
  • Discover they experienced a previous attack / prior conversation (same attacker as a known breach)
  • Use that intel to message directly and book meetings

Channel/partner strategy (because Rubric only transacts via partners)

She works with four partners and uses detective work to determine which partner has:

  • The strongest relationship
  • The most relevant customer knowledge

Logic example:

  • If the company works with Softcat/Bytes/Phoenix/CDW etc.
  • but spends $10M with Phoenix vs $10 with Bytes
  • prioritize Phoenix for better intel

Using channel managers to mobilize access

  • Reach out to internal channel managers to confirm “who owns this account”
  • Have SDR also do it
  • Then ask the partner rep for intel / introductions

Stakeholder mapping (“crown jewel of a prospect”)

She maps key contacts into a target list, including:

  • Partner-provided contacts
  • People with access to senior stakeholders

She tracks:

  • Annual report + strategic priorities
  • News/trigger events
  • Current tech/incumbents
  • “Who to go after” (seniority sequencing)

Messaging principle for tier ones

She claims most accounts have only ~5 common challenges.

The job is to find 3–5 trigger points and reference them concisely. Her “intel sheet” becomes one-line references, not paragraphs.

Example of “thin-slice personalization”

Based on listening advice:

  • If the prospect mentioned reading/listening and you didn’t finish, say yes and cite a nugget

Example message flow:

  • Reference she discussed the prospect’s podcast/project
  • Reference the cloud migration + increasing reliance on Entra
  • Connect to a known cybersecurity recovery challenge
  • Add credibility hook: “PS: really liked your podcast…”

3) Volume / Industry Plays: scalable messaging with weekly themes

How she selects topics

  • Uses a weekly security newsletter (example: Ollie Whitehouse)
  • Feeds content into Claude to extract:
    • trends by industry
    • implications for specific personas/segments

Execution plan

  • Focus topic for 1–2 weeks
  • SDR supports the motion to generate meeting volume

Industry-specific example: housing associations

Pattern:

  • moving critical systems to cloud
  • difficulty migrating legacy platforms

She applies a repeatable conversation frame across the list.

Case example: law firms

  • Identify an “attack path”
  • Send similar messaging across law firms

Example message logic:

  • Reference an attack group flagged publicly (FBI context) and escalation to UK
  • Position the risk
  • Address objections:
    • backups exist, but identity recovery delays system restoration by weeks
  • “Blast” the same core story, with only minimal per-account variation

Offer tactic highlighted: the “Cyber Resilience Workshop” (tier-one CTA/value add)

She uses a high-value, low-disruption offer to convert tier-one prospects.

Cyber Resilience Workshop (what it is)

  • Performed on-site (limited to tier-one due to resources/travel)
  • Vendor-agnostic
  • Helps the prospect understand:
    • Critical systems (“tier zero/tier one apps”)
    • Recovery order during a cyber incident
    • Downtime gap + potential cost of downtime
    • Sensitive vs non-sensitive data implications in incident recovery

Positioning

  • Usually includes mapping critical systems and recovery sequence
  • Positioned as an alternative to paid consulting (“spending thousands and thousands”)
  • Implied she can deliver it “for free” for these accounts
  • She recommends referencing it naturally (not just asking for a meeting)

Calendar/operating system (how she fits prospecting into a real sales week)

Charlie emphasizes that it works only when prospecting time is blocked precisely.

Time-boxing rules & mechanics

  • She uses a timer to measure how long tasks actually take and adjusts blocks accordingly
  • Target durations mentioned:
    • Tier one research: ~30 minutes
    • Tier one email/LinkedIn steps: ~1 hour per account
    • Closed-lost calling: ~1.5 hours
    • Volume work: ~30-minute blocks
    • Tier-one email sequences:
      • multiple emails (email 1/2/3): ~1 hour each
      • roughly 2–2.5 hours for two tier-one accounts (based on her described sequencing)

Weekly planning structure

  • Every Friday, she reviews next week and schedules:
    • prospecting blocks
    • demo prep / solution engineer prep
    • enablement/learning for complex product mastery

Execution discipline

Treat prospecting blocks like meetings:

  • Color-coded
  • Calendar invites include direct links to the correct spreadsheet/sequence

Avoid:

  • booking over blocks
  • back-to-back scheduling that causes loss of focus

She also schedules matching blocks for calls + follow-ups so outcomes don’t fall through.

Daily prioritization (“planner”)

Each day includes:

  • “top priorities”
  • top 3 accounts targeted (existing opps or prospecting)
  • quick tasks vs mid tasks vs deep focus
  • end-of-day reflection

KPIs / targets explicitly mentioned (and implicitly)

Explicit

  • Tier ones are segmented to hit her quarter/number using larger strategic accounts
  • No specific numbers for quota attainment, win rate, CAC/LTV, churn, ARR, etc. were provided in the subtitles

Implicit performance drivers

  • Meeting volume target supported by SDR via:
    • SDR targeted on number of meetings + ops
  • Segment-specific conversion logic:
    • Signals: easier conversion due to familiarity
    • Tier ones: enough pipeline for annual/strategic targets via longer cycles

Key actionable takeaways / playbook summary (condensed)

  • Segment territory into:
    • Signals (warm/familiar intent)
    • Tier Ones (strategic, longer cycle, deep research)
    • Volume/Industry Plays (theme-driven scalability)
  • For each segment, use different:
    • research depth (5–15 min vs 30+ min vs 2–5 min)
    • outreach channels (calls + light personalization vs partner/channel intel vs scalable email themes)
  • Build credibility fast using:
    • prior conversations
    • partner intel
    • incident/attack-path “trigger points”
    • thin-slice personalization (one nugget cited)
  • Operate with calendar OS:
    • time-box every prospecting task
    • color-code and link to execution sheets
    • prevent meetings-overwriting prospecting blocks

Presenters / sources

  • Presenter / source: Charlie Johnson (multiple-time President’s Club winner)
  • Other mentioned people/sources: Sam (SDR), Billy (partner/channel rep referenced in example), Hannah (tier-one prospect example), Ollie Whitehouse (cybersecurity newsletter source)
  • Company/brand references: Rubric, Sales Navigator, TeamLink intro, Softcat, Phoenix, CDW, Bytes, Microsoft Entra, Salesforce, event referenced: InfoSec (Infosec)

Original video