It's Not About You

The Lead - It’s Not About You

As I was sitting here thinking about what I should write about, it occurred to me that some of the most foundational principles of outbound are often overlooked. I see evidence of this every day and you likely do too. Just go check your Spam folder. Here’s one I got this week:

! cold email

Now look, I know I’m not stating the obvious here when I say this is not very good. But let’s explore why that is.

1. Bare minimum personalization - they know my company name. “Congrats on your position” is pretty awkward though considering I started the company, rather than taking a new “job”.
2. Way too general - what kind of marketing are we talking about here? “Companies like” doesn’t really tell me anything about who you work with and what you do for them.
3. Where’s the pain? How can you help? - this email doesn’t even slightly compel me to take action. There’s no evidence they understand a challenge I might be facing, or how they might solve that problem. In fact, there’s not even a question asked! Oof.

I wish I could say this is uncommon, but we know it’s not. It’s lazy, it’s poor, and I bet it’s yielding very little for this rep (or AI bot). Spray and pray.

If we had to boil down the basic failing of most cold outbound to one simple thing, it’s this:

The focus is on a result for the sender, rather than a result for the recipient.

Here’s a simple thought exercise. I want you to put yourself in the shoes of your perfect client. Someone who you would love to work with, and who you could really help. A high value relationship.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What are the challenges this person is facing?
2. What sort of impact are those challenges having on their daily life?
3. How can your product/service resolve those challenges, and make their life easier?

You might be saying to yourself at this point, “Well duh, Ben. This is fairly obvious stuff.”

Sadly, I see messages like the screenshot above all the time. And you do too. So while it may be obvious, the majority of people doing outbound are still missing the mark.

I’ll have some more content coming out about how to better structure your messaging, whether it’s cold email, calls etc. But the point of this post, is to challenge you to think differently about the way you approach outbound. I’m talking mindset here.

What if you were so focused on helping people, that you really took the time to put yourself in their shoes and understand what they’re up against?

What if every “sales” interaction was an opportunity to make someone’s life better?

What if you were willing to help without expectation of anything in return?

If you were serious about those questions, would you send someone an email that says “We have done this for 696 clients”? Of course not.

Here’s another way to think about this: think of a problem you’re having that’s top of mind for you right now. I mean something that is critical for you to solve. And then craft an email to yourself from the perspective of someone uniquely positioned to help you.

In honor of Masters week, here’s an example for me:

“Hey Ben-

A lot of amateur weekend golfers really struggle to hit their irons consistently. With work, family, and other obligations, it’s just not realistic to get out to the course regularly and really focus on getting better.

We’ve developed a quick guide that outlines 3 drills you can practice at home, so you don’t have to worry about showing up to the golf course and immediately start shanking the ball all over the place. Would it be helpful if I sent that over?”

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Give it a try, seriously. There’s no silver bullet, but I hope this helps you start to think through outbound (and sales in general) in a way that is less focused on you and more focused on the people you’re really trying to help.

More to come on this topic. For now, stay in the fight.

Outbound On Air - Episode 4

A couple weeks ago, Kristen and I dropped the fourth edition of our Outbound On Air podcast. We covered a fun question on this one - “Do You Really Need Outbound?”. Obviously a complex conversation (otherwise the episode wouldn’t be 45 minutes ha!).

New Episode out TOMORROW - subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you like to consume your content.