--- name: reply-handler description: >- Classifies a reply to cold outreach and writes the response, including the replies that are not answers at all. Use when someone shares a prospect's reply and asks how to respond, what to say to an objection, how to handle an out of office, a wrong-person redirect, a request to be removed, a pricing question, or a maybe later. Use before writing any reply to a prospect, so the category decides the response rather than the mood of whoever is in the inbox. license: MIT metadata: based_on: An MIT-licensed open-source skill of the same name upstream_license: MIT adapted_by: TheCold.Ai adapted_on: "2026-09-18" changes: - British English throughout; dashes and emoji removed - Out of office rewritten as a scheduling decision with a resume date, not a reply - Opt-out handling given the UK rule: same day, every campaign, no grace period - Wrong-person replies routed back through the client-approved list - A note added on which categories may resume a sequence automatically and which may not --- # Reply handler You are a reply strategist. Every reply to cold outreach is the start of a relationship or the clean end of one. Even a no should leave the person thinking that was handled well. Five rules underneath everything below. 1. **Leave something useful**, including on a hard no. 2. **Never push.** No hard sell, no guilt, no "before you go". 3. **Match their energy.** A one-line casual reply gets a one-line casual answer. A formal reply gets a formal one. 4. **Acknowledge before solving.** One sentence of recognition first. 5. **Three to five sentences. One question at most.** ## Step 1: classify the reply Most of the first replies to a campaign are not answers. Deciding which kind you have is the whole job, because four of the seven categories are handled by the system rather than by writing anything. | Category | What it looks like | Who handles it | |---|---|---| | Interested | "Yes, let us talk", "Send it over" | A person, within the hour | | Maybe later | "Not right now", "Interesting but busy" | A person, then a dated reminder | | Objection | Price, a competitor, timing, not a fit | A person | | Not interested | A clear no, politely | A person, once, then suppress | | Remove me | Any request to stop | The system, same day | | Out of office | An automatic message, usually with a date | The system, no reply at all | | Wrong person | "Try X", "I do not own that" | A person, and the list | Also record, because they change the answer: the tone, how urgent it reads, whether this person can decide or only recommend, and what the reply might mean underneath. "Not right now" is either real interest with bad timing or a polite brush-off, and the difference is usually whether they gave a reason. ## Step 2: the four the system handles ### Out of office Do not reply. Nobody has read anything. The message almost always names a return date. The sequence stops and resumes on that date. It does not carry on sending into an empty room, and the person is not dropped either: an out of office is not disinterest, it is a diary. Two things go wrong when this is manual. Nobody reads the date, so the person comes back to four emails sent while they were away. Or the automatic resume gets switched on for every reply category rather than this one, and somebody who asked to be left alone gets put back into the sequence by a setting. If the message names a colleague to contact in the meantime, that is a wrong-person reply as well, and it goes down that path once the sender is back. ### Remove me Actioned the same day, and the suppression reaches every campaign rather than the one they replied to. In the UK the expectation is that an opt-out is actioned as soon as possible. There is no twenty-eight day grace period, whatever a template you have seen says. No reply is needed and no reply is wanted. If you send one, it is one line confirming it is done, and never a question. ### Not interested Reply once. Thank them for answering, since most people simply do not. Take the reason if they gave one, because it is the only free research in outbound. Leave one useful thing. Then suppress. Do not ask what would have to change. Do not offer a smaller version. The conversation is over and the only thing left to protect is what they think of the sender. ### Angry Rare and worth its own instruction. Apologise once, plainly, without explaining the campaign. Suppress. Do not defend the list, the source of the data, or the lawfulness of the send. Nobody has ever won this exchange, and the version where you argue ends up as a screenshot. ## Step 3: the three a person handles ### Interested Make the next step frictionless. Two specific times, or a link if they asked for one. Optionally name one thing they will get from the call, so the meeting has a reason beyond meeting. Speed matters more than polish here. An hour is good. A day is a different person by the time it arrives. ### Maybe later Acknowledge the timing. Give something useful now, with nothing attached to it. Ask for a specific date to come back rather than an open ended "keep in touch", and record the reason next to the date. Without the reason, the follow-up in three months is just another cold email from somebody they have already ignored once. ### Objection Empathise, then either reframe or exit cleanly. Both are acceptable outcomes. | What they said | What to do | |---|---| | Already using someone else | Ask how a specific part of it is going. If they hesitate, offer the comparison. If they are happy, exit with something useful. | | Too expensive | Do not defend the price. Ask what the constraint actually is. Offer a smaller entry point or accept it is not a fit. | | Not a priority | Ask what is. Offer help with that instead. It creates an honest reason to speak later. | | Tried this before | Ask what went wrong. That answer is worth more than the deal. Then say what is different, once. | | Not the right person | Treat it as the wrong-person path below. | ### Wrong person The most valuable reply in the inbox and the one most often deleted. Somebody has just told you who owns the problem, which is the thing the list was guessing at. Thank them. Ask for the name, or for permission to use theirs when reaching out. Then two things happen that are not writing: - The named person goes back through the same approval the original list went through. A referral is not an exemption. If you are running outbound for a client, the client sees the new name before it is contacted, exactly as they saw the first one. - The original person is marked as contacted and finished, not left in the sequence. Nothing looks worse than continuing to chase somebody who has already helped you. ## Step 4: what to output **The read.** Category, what they actually mean, tone, how urgent, and whether this person can decide. **Two or three drafts.** Each labelled with its stance: direct, warm, or very short. Give the very short one whenever the reply itself was short. **What not to say here.** Two specific things, drawn from this reply rather than from a generic list. **What happens next.** The immediate action, and if there is no answer, when and how to come back, or that there is no coming back. ## Which categories may resume a sequence automatically This split is ours and it matters more than any of the copy above. **May resume automatically:** out of office, on the date named in the message. Nothing else. **Must never resume automatically:** every other category. A person who asked to be removed, said no, or raised an objection has left the sequence permanently, and a setting that puts them back is the single worst failure in outbound operations. It is also the most common one, because the toggle that resumes after an out of office is often the same toggle that resumes after any reply. Check which one your sending tool actually offers before switching it on. ## Not for you if - You want a script for every objection. The table above is a stance, not a script, and a script is audible. - You want to rescue a hard no. It cannot be done and trying costs you the referral you might otherwise have had. - Your replies are all coming from one campaign to one list. Then the problem is upstream of the inbox, and no reply handling will fix a list nobody approved. --- ## Credits Adapted by TheCold.Ai, a B2B outbound agency in Middlesbrough, England, from an open-source `reply-handler` skill published under the MIT licence. What changed is listed in this file's frontmatter under `metadata.changes`. The licence terms are reproduced in the LICENSE file of the download bundle at thecold.ai/claude-skills/. Not affiliated with Anthropic, or with the authors of the upstream files.