Outbound Sales System Health Checklist

When outbound underperforms, it is hard to know where to look. A short checklist makes you check each part of the system instead of rewriting emails.

The free Pipeline Health Check asks ten yes or no questions, says it takes two minutes and shows where the system leaks, with a fix for each gap.

The Ten Questions

The check asks whether your ideal customer profile is documented with firmographics, personas and disqualifiers, and whether outbound sends from a separate domain rather than your primary company domain. It asks whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC pass on every sending domain, whether new inboxes warm up for at least two weeks before carrying volume, and whether every lead is verified and enriched before entering a sequence.

It also asks whether daily send volume is capped per inbox, whether you track reply rate and positive-reply rate per sequence rather than only opens, and whether every sequence launches with a written hypothesis and success metric. The last two ask whether no-reply and closed-lost leads go into a recycle track and whether someone owns CRM hygiene.

Answer From Evidence

Say yes only to what you could show. If you are unsure whether DMARC passes on every domain, check before answering.

Read The Nos As A Work List

A fictional example: a team answers no on warmup, caps and verification. Those three point to the same area, the sending setup, so fix them together before touching copy.

Fix In Order

Start with the earliest problem in the chain: targeting and list quality, then domains and authentication, then volume and warmup, then sequences and measurement, then follow-up and CRM.

Recheck

Run the check again after a few weeks of changes. A better score is a sign the changes took, and remaining nos show what is left.

Run The Check

Open the Pipeline Health Check, answer the ten questions and write down each no as a task.