3 biggest myths of outbound in 2026

I know these are the same three biggest myths of 2025.

But LinkedIn made me call this out:

1. Myth: Your outbound sequence is scientific.

This is a real sequence being promoted on LinkedIn right now, under the hook “How to build an outbound sequence.” Last I checked: 763 likes, 115 comments.

Usually when someone says “how to build” they mean they have cancelled out ways NOT to build something. But no. Not on LinkedIn of course. Here you can claim proficiency simply by having a following, a POV, and sharing something other than a selfie for an image.

There are so many things wrong with the above sequence, not only from the TitanX perspective of “why are you treating everyone like they’re the same and calling people who don’t pick up?”

But also:

• Why is there no phone call on day 2? On day 5? So many arbitrary features here.
• Why three touches day 1? (Ultimately we all want to believe we can convert on that first touch, I think; it’s the holy grail we chase).
• By making the day 1 steps all manual, 100 contacts creates 300 manual actions to take. With typical connect rates (3-5 conversations on the phone) and response rates (2 replies on email; 0 on LinkedIn given these are connection requests - and then fresh contacts demand more of this - no wonder SDRs get buried under this workload. They become a hamster wheel shop primarily dedicated to tracking whether they’ve “done the sequence.” Instead, “this many people are in my sequences” are words that should never enter your mouth unless you’re about to ask for more high quality data inputs to feed in.
• Ah the break up email. “You didn’t know we had a thing going, but I wanted you to know I’m done with you.” Always feels good. Sure, the best ones use hilarious GIFs. But the painful part is: why do we wait till day 17 to use scarcity messaging? That stuff works way up front.
• There is no mention of deliverability or telephony or data quality. If those emails and calls do not reach the prospect, this is a MASSIVE waste of time. Given where email deliverability is at these days, likely many of those 700 likes and 100 comments are still using their primary domains, automating with a Big Name Sequencer, hitting spam, and wondering why no one is responding.

2. Myth: Your data vendor is the best data vendor.

False.

Almost all data vendors are buying from 2-3 upstream data wholesalers. They all have terrible phone data.

Listen to any conversation between sales reps about their preferred data vendors, and it sounds like rich kids chatting about their favorite luxury tote brands. “I like this one.” “I like this one.” “This one’s what I use for Europe.” …

Ultimately, data vendors are tasked with a difficult product positioning problem: they CANNOT be expensive. So they must buy cheap data by the boatloads and add features to differentiate on top.

They must care more about lots of data, than good data. In fact, the moment they start caring about good data, is the moment they start to look a lot like yours truly.

Visit the website of any enrichment tool. They’ll talk about how many contacts and companies exist in their database.

They’ll talk about verification, sure. Lately, they’ll brag about waterfalls.

But have you ever wondered about these things?

Verification almost exclusively refers to email verification scrubbing “catch-all” emails. This is good and should be done. But the most attention phone verification ever gets is to ensure the line is active and in use (which is about as good as any data vendor can do without Phone Intent). However, these products never articulate this clearly, even in FAQs. You hit a dropdown about “how does verification work?” and you’ll only see details about email verification.

Waterfalls are fascinating creatures. Inevitably, every single one is designed to output the FIRST contact information found for a contact. Not the best. Not the right info. And, to my continued dismay, they don’t check multiple data sources and triangulate the best info. That would cost too much. That doesn’t mean there’s no utility in them - sure you need to find some contact info for a prospect.

But remember: inaccurate contact info isn’t a “zero-impact” part of your GTM system. It’s extremely detrimental.

It means wasted human activity. It means you stop hunting for better info.

And in a world where 95%+ of your outreach results in dead air…

You do not know if you’re not getting their attention, or simply not even reaching them.

3. Myth: More headcount means more pipeline.

It’d be nice if this were true. And certainly every top down forecast model depends on it being somewhat true.

It’s also not never true.

But there is a high bar to be met in order for new pipe gen headcount to be successful:

1. Product market fit - or a scientific approach to determining it. This means you know who and why and how a purchase will happen inside of a given archetype of company.
2. Message market fit (shoutout to Kellen) - or a scientific approach to determining it. This means you know generally what problem/solution/product descriptions will unlock further conversations with your audience.
3. Great data. You have real contact info for real humans at the ready. This is way more involved than it sounds, as you need to know where to find accurate company lists for your industry/niche, then contact data along with it. If you’re lucky and your ICP lives on LinkedIn, it’s still important to remember not everyone does.
4. Great deliverability. You have (for email) invested in DMARC, DKIM, SPF, verification, turned off open tracking, removed pixels, removed images/HTML, prepped multiple inboxes per rep, aged your domains, and (depending on which school of thought you lean on), warmed up your outgoing inboxes. You have (for the phone) invested in STIR/SHAKEN, rotate-ready numbers, stopped parallel dialing, registered your CNAM (Caller ID Name), capped your daily call velocity per number, proactively registered your numbers with the major carrier analytics engines, and scored your numbers with TitanX.

There are no shortcuts.

It is worth it to pay to be heard.

Anything else is a prayer.

It is likely that the lack of focus on infrastructure is why so few orgs are hiring new reps the way they used to. At least, that’s what Bain’s small sample size suggests.

When we scanned our own call recordings for discussions of headcount changes to SDRs - we found 209 calls since October 1 of last year where headcount was mentioned, from 51 unique companies.

This is a bit more optimistic. At least, pipeline is a clear investment area for many of the companies we talk to. But that’s a biased sample, of companies who believe in solving growth via outbound.

It’s also possible that people don’t want to share with a vendor about cutting SDRs - word might get out, or it feels bad to name it.

The good news?

If you DO invest in the tech, data, and infrastructure to win at outbound, you get outsized results.

SDRs booking 20+ meetings a month, having 20+ conversations a day.

Which means that with…

• Focused, behavior-specific sequences (only call people who pick up the phone till you get them on the phone, only email people where you have bad phone data)
• High quality data
• Fewer reps than you would’ve asked for 2 years ago

You can bust the myths and beat your targets.

Thanks for reading,

Evan Dunn (LinkedIn)

P.S. If you have questions, hit reply. I read every response.