The Company and Challenge
Alliance IT Partners is a managed services provider based in Ohio, serving small and mid-market businesses. With a three-person sales team, they relied heavily on referrals and local networking events. In mid-2024, they decided to systematically pursue manufacturing companies with 50–200 employees in their region.
Their previous cold email attempts had generated almost no responses. They needed a completely different approach.
Building the ICP and List
They narrowed their ICP to:
- Manufacturing companies in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana
- 50–200 employees
- Evidence of IT pain (job postings for IT generalists, recent cybersecurity incidents in their sector, companies running on-premise infrastructure based on LinkedIn job descriptions)
They built a list of 180 target accounts and identified two contacts per account: the COO or VP of Operations and the most senior IT contact.
The Sequence
Email 1 (Day 1): Led with a cybersecurity angle—referenced a real ransomware incident that hit a competitor in their manufacturing niche. Asked one question: "Have you done a security assessment in the last 12 months?"
Email 2 (Day 5): Shared a one-page case study of a similar-sized Ohio manufacturer they had helped reduce downtime by 60%.
Email 3 (Day 10): Brief follow-up with a different angle—IT staff retention problems in manufacturing and how fractional CIO services eliminate the risk.
Email 4 (Day 17): Social proof email listing three manufacturing clients (with permission) and the measurable outcomes.
Email 5 (Day 25): Break-up email: "Closing this out—if IT infrastructure is ever on your radar in the next 6 months, feel free to reply."
The Result
The $180K contract came from a prospect who replied "not interested" to the first email. The sales rep did not remove them from the sequence. On email 4, the same prospect replied again: "Actually, we've had three IT people quit this year. Can we talk?"
Total sequence to signed contract: 74 days.
Key Lessons
Do not remove "not interested" replies automatically. This prospect's situation changed between email 1 and email 4. Timing matters as much as targeting.
Industry-specific pain converts better than generic IT pitches. Manufacturing has unique IT challenges (OT/IT convergence, legacy systems, compliance). Every email spoke to those specifically.
Persistence at appropriate intervals works. A 25-day, 5-touch sequence is not aggressive. It is thorough. Most prospects simply need more than one touchpoint to engage.
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