Go-to-Market Professionals: mass-mailed outreach that isn’t tailored to readers and relevant to their needs not only doesn’t generate leads, it can actually damage your business.
My clients and contacts with obvious leadership titles (“executive,” “VP,” “Senior Director,” etc.) report that they get a slew of unsolicited and generic emails describing services and products that don’t touch on their top-of-mind challenges.
Thinking about my situation personally, on average, I get 12 messages every day from companies trying to sell me something. If we round a bit we can say in a week I get about 60 emails and, in a year, well over 3100 (and it’s much more than that, we’re just being conservative here).
In the last year, I’ve responded to exactly one of these emails (more on that below), but as a curious sales consultant, I tend to read quite a few. In most of the cases, reading outreach emails actually made me less likely to want to work with the businesses that sent them.
Most of the of the messages received (I’d say close to 75% in my case) are vague descriptions of a product or service. These get deleted pretty quickly, but if you catch a reader at a bad time (or your email is the fifth they’ve received from your company in too short a time), you can hurt your organization’s credibility by being unfocused or irrelevant, and not using the readers’ (our) time well.
The other group of outreach messages (close to 25% for me) start with some kind of gimmick that might generate a moment of interest, but also quickly prove to be superficial ploys to attract attention. These also get deleted, and lead to mixed sentiment. Sometimes we as readers and fellow sellers respect the hustle and may feel the cognitive equivalent of a head nod. Much of the time, however, the reader is just as or perhaps more annoyed that even more of their time has been wasted.
Based on this anecdotal analysis then, the vast majority of cold outreach falls by the wayside, and a decent amount of the time it actually generates a negative impression.
The Rare Times When Cold Outreach Works
The one cold solicitation I responded to in the last year exactly personified the best practices I recommend to GTM professionals. It spoke to a problem I was experiencing for which I didn’t yet have a solution. The company in question hit me with an email right at the point when I was feeling the most discomfort with my situation, and shared an idea about my problem that showed me they had a possibly useful perspective.
Successes like this don’t happen by accident. The best GTM professionals do research and tailor outreach with insights (they talk about their prospects’ world, not themselves). This starts by identifying an ideal client persona and spending a little more time building outreach that’s more personalized and relevant.
In my case, the vendor in question had been actively searching for business launched within a certain time frame, of a certain size, and with evidence of using certain marketing tools but not others. They realized that leaders in those circumstances were most likely to be experiencing certain challenges, and created an outreach campaign that had something interesting and differentiated to say about that specific set of challenges.
Measure Twice, Email Once
Outreach like this requires more time and thinking up front. It requires that you both scope out the right buyers for your service–those most likely to generate quality sales and to stay loyal longer–and to identify a compelling idea that demonstrates your value as a consultative partner.
You may only get one shot when you do reach out! Don’t waste that chance with a generic message that sounds like every other vendor looking for attention or, worse, irritate your readers by wasting their time.
Instead of relying on gimmicks or describing your product and hoping it’s exactly what your client needs, say something useful and interesting about your client’s world that they didn’t know. This will differentiate you as a vendor and build credibility that talking to you will be a worthwhile use of time.
If you’re interested in a partner that can help your team tailor outreach campaigns, define ideal customer personas, and craft messages that build trust and credibility, drop us a line at depthchargeconsulting.com .
