The Standard · Sales and Business Development
Cold Outreach
Writes outreach with AI that is personal, accurate and compliant.
You use AI to research prospects and draft personalised messages, follow-ups and replies across professional channels. It helps you find angles, but can mislead you with invented research, stale details, generic claims or unsafe targeting.
The exam for Cold Outreach is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Cold Outreach, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to extend cold messages with researched relevance, alternative angles and likely recipient questions.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the prospect, outreach purpose, verified facts, channel, length and required call to action.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn generated copy into a credible cold message with natural personalisation, clear value and an appropriate response path.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check every personalisation claim, contact detail and offer against supplied prospect sources before sending the message.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep personal and restricted prospect information out of briefs and outputs, and decline unlawful or harmful outreach requests.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which cold outreach the assistant may draft, keep unconfirmed targeting judgements, and name who approves sensitive contact.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A personalised cold message from verified prospect research, a clear value proposition and a suitable reply path.
- 02
A follow-up sequence that adds new value, varies its angle and stops when contact becomes inappropriate.
- 03
A reply to an early objection using supplied context, accurate claims and a non-pressuring next step.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in cold outreach. They briefed the assistant with prospect research, caught unsupported claims, and delivered compliant outreach messages.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Cold Outreach
- Who it is for
- Sales development representatives, account executives, consultants, recruiters and business development professionals who initiate contact with new prospects.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Grant Writing
Writes grant applications with AI that meet the call exactly and make no claim the evidence cannot back.
- Negotiation
Prepares negotiations with AI and keeps the judgement, and the relationship, human.
- Business Development
Researches and approaches prospects with AI and keeps every claim about them accurate.
- Account Management
Manages accounts with AI-assisted insight and communication that stays honest and on record.
- Sales Conversations
Prepares sales conversations with AI and never lets it promise what the product cannot do.
- Networking & Relationships
Builds relationships with AI-assisted research and follow-up that stays genuine.
- Tender & Bid Writing
Writes tenders and bids with AI that answer the specification and evidence every claim.
Everything in Sales and Business Development, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Cold Outreach covers this skill. No book is required to pass.