Print businesses have no shortage of ways to acquire lists of companies and contacts. The harder question is what happens next.
During this Dscoop.com session, host Roy Eitan, Dr. Desiree-Jessica Pely, Co-Founder and CEO of Alfa, and Paul Curto, Head of Revenue at Forcivate, challenge the familiar “spray and pray” approach of contacting huge numbers of prospects with largely identical messages. Buyers already receive more outreach than they can possibly absorb. The opportunity, they argue, is to find a meaningful signal through that noise — something happening inside a company that gives your sales team a relevant reason to reach out now.
Those signals depend on what you're selling. A company might be hiring its first marketing employee, launching a product, expanding distribution, investing in marketing automation, or showing other evidence of a changing business need. Alfa uses AI to research companies and people, identify signals that align with a seller’s offering and surface the people most closely connected to that need. Desiree demonstrates the process using a print-specific example, creating a prospecting stream for direct-mail services, and showing how a printer could identify companies already exhibiting behaviors that make personalized print potentially relevant to them. The same thinking could help a PSP prospect for its own business or potentially help customers improve the targeting behind their direct-mail campaigns.
Paul brings the important practitioner perspective. He shows the actual Alfa environment Forciv8 uses to prospect, including the signals his team follows, how it divides target markets into different streams, and how it tests messages against one another. His experience also reinforces a counterintuitive lesson: Smarter prospecting doesn't necessarily mean contacting more people. Alfa deliberately surfaces about 30 prospects per person each day, giving users time to review the AI-generated research and messaging before anything goes out. Desiree argues that a human should remain in that loop. Bad personalization can be worse than no personalization at all, particularly when an inaccurate message immediately tells a prospect that the sender doesn't really understand them.
The discussion also explores what happens after a sales team starts using the system. Paul explains how new interns have been able to begin prospecting within roughly a day rather than spending weeks learning research and outreach processes. A leaderboard makes activity, connections, and responses visible across the team, creating both accountability and a little friendly competition. More importantly, the data allows leaders to compare different target segments and messages, coach people based on actual activity and ultimately focus on outcomes such as responses, meetings, and closed business rather than simply rewarding outreach volume.
