Lieben posts a six step account tiering build for outbound

Michel Lieben published a six step workflow for ranking accounts on fit and timing, then spending outbound effort in proportion to where an account lands. The premise is that every account currently gets the same cold email, and most of them should not.

How the scoring works

Step one starts in the CRM, using closed-won and closed-lost deals to define the ICP, then splitting the resulting list by region, industry and size. Step two grades each account on five things, industry, headcount, geography, tech stack and contacts, producing a best, good or weak fit. Lieben names four disqualifiers to drop on sight, an industry you do not sell to, a market you cannot serve, a competitor already locked in, and nobody inside who matches your buyer.

Step three splits signals three ways. First party is site visits, product usage, calls and LinkedIn. Second party is review sites, a champion changing jobs and ad engagement. Third party is funding, hiring, tech stack changes and news. Step four combines the two axes, and Lieben is explicit that timing outranks fit at the top of the list. Tiers get rerun every Monday.

What each tier gets

Step five is a two week run of thought-leader ads, the founder's posts run as ads, pointed at target accounts, with the Companies page in LinkedIn Campaign Manager showing which ones engage. Step six matches effort to tier. Tier one gets a hand-researched first message to three people per account across email, LinkedIn and phone in the same week. Tier two groups similar accounts into clusters with one angle per cluster, sequences plus LinkedIn messages. Tier three is a short automated sequence plus ads and content.

The only number in the post is 112 positive replies, which Lieben attributes to AirOps, an agency client, after inviting buyers to a webinar and asking for their input. That is an offer result, not evidence that the tiering model produced it, and nothing in the post says how many accounts were contacted or over what period.

Michel Lieben

@MichLieben

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A good fit visiting your site lands in Tier 1, ahead of a best fit with no signal yet.

For people sending, this is a framework for allocating research time, not a tested lift. The piece worth stealing cheaply is the disqualification list, since weak fit accounts cost the same sends as good ones.