Sales prospects don’t care what you want
At dinner this past Friday my friend Taylor asked me the most influential book I’ve ever read. I’m not one for absolutes like favorite movie declarations etc but this question was easy for me. 13 years ago at my first ever real job my first manager gave everyone a copy of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s an old book with an outdated title that is slightly off-putting. The book was written in 1936 yet is as applicable as ever today as a blueprint for effective communication.
Of all the lessons in the book, the main takeaway for me was a simple framework of communicating with the receiver’s interests in mind. I’ve since given that book to every person I’ve ever managed. I keep a copy handy for reminders from time to time because a lot of what’s discussed is counterintuitive to our own human nature.
Raise your hand if you’ve sent or received an email with the opening sentence that goes something like, “ I wanted to reach out because…”.
<Raises hand >
If you didn’t raise your hand you may not have exchanged emails with modern business communicators because the “I wanted” opener is rampant. It is also a terrible way to start an email.
Email, both internal and external, is often unsolicited. Cold outreach is the beginning of a request for attention, time, or effort. The “I want” opener emails translate to asking for a recipient’s attention, time, or effort because it will somehow serve you, the sender.
If you were to ask for time from a friend you may very well get it because relationships are reciprocal. The business professional world is different, especially in sales. In sales, you need to give the prospective customer a reason to take the time to listen to you. The way to do it is by explaining how your product or service can benefit them. Sales gets a bad rap for being sleazy - but done when well all it really is is effective communication.
To attract the attention of a prospective customer, you must always consider what they want. When explaining a product/service, the most successful salespeople do it with hyper focus on the prospects interests and very little on theirs. Unfortunately, we are wired to do the opposite. Human psychology is designed to think incessantly about our own wants, needs, and aspirations. With intentional mindfulness on communication we can observe when we display our inherent selfishness. What you’ll find is attempting to communicate with a prospective customer by sharing what you want will not garner much attention.
To illustrate, let’s take an example that recently made some rounds on Twitter. I intentionally remove names and companies as the goal here isn’t to shame or throw anyone under the bus. In this case the “I wanted to...” takes the shape of “I thought it would be great to...”
The customer was so frustrated with repeated email outreach that they took to Twitter to try something, anything, to make it stop.
William is clearly a wee bit upset and I don’t believe angering a prospective customer was the goal of the sales rep. The rep was actually praised for being persistent. Persistence is certainly a trait of a good sales person, but you first have to have the right message.
Here’s how I would go about this.
Step 1: Determine the value you provide that the receiver of the message is most likely to care about.
In this case, the sales rep assumes William is interested in making money. Not a poor assumption, most of the supply in their marketplace are trying to supplement income by cutting out Hollywood and going direct to the consumer. It is a brilliant disruptive model that is a booming marketplace. However, the best of the best talent has yet to partake. My assumption is because they are being approached with a value prop they simply don’t care about. William is reportedly worth $100,000,000. The average cost of this service is $50. A-List celebrities are free to set a higher price, but even so, they don’t seem to care. I would give zero f#$ks about most things if I had 100 million.
1a: Do your research.
All anyone really has is time. William is 89 years old. Even if he set the highest price on the platform it’s safe to say he won’t care about the extra cash when he’s likely trying to maximize the time he has left.
Upon quick scan of the internet, William already spends a huge amount of time interacting with fans. His Fan Club states, “home of Good things, amusing things, & beneficial things”. Free to join! On Twitter, “So Twitter and social media is liberating for someone like me. I can speak my mind, my thoughts, my ideas and usually they don’t get filtered.” On Facebook, “I try to be somewhat interactive — more on the group than the page, just because I feel that there’s meaningful discussions there. People discuss their lives, their ups and downs — it’s familial”. The guy tweets about 50 times per day, he clearly enjoys interacting with fans for the human connection and for good cause.
Step 2: Craft your message about what your receiver wants, NOT what YOU want.
It’s rather simple, yet seldom practiced.
2a. Subject Line
Email is a chain of events and the subject line is the most important part. It is step 1 and if you miss on step 1 there is no step 2. The goal of the subject line is to get an open. That is it, get the receiver intrigued enough to open the email.
2b. First sentence to hook attention.
Based on what I know about William, here is how I’d start the email.
Reaching out to share a new way to make meaningful connections with fans and their loved ones while also benefiting the Hollywood Charity Horse Show. (his charity, )
I intentionally leave out the proper grammar “I am” at the beginning of this sentence. I don’t care about proper grammar and this is not about me. If you're old school and this makes you cringe you may be surprised by the increase in sales reps saying they connect best with text messages or social DMs. Emojis to get the message across? I use this beginning in most emails I send, “reaching out to share (what the receiver cares about)”.
2c. Additional but simple value prop detail
Celebrity X has raised $400,000 in the last 3 months through (company). While doing so they’ve made 4,957 fan’s day with an interactive personalized message that they can cherish forever. Here is a link to some entertaining reactions.
Given your status with millions of fans on social media, (company)’s platform helps you make even more personalized connections and do some good along the way.
Stay on theme. Give detail to solidify credibility that your service can deliver on what they care about.
2d. Call to action
Detail on a next step that makes it sound super easy. Use words like quick, simple, short call etc. It depends on what your goal of the outreach is. Is it a meeting, a call, a web form sign up etc. Whatever it is, it has to be easy. You aren’t trying to close a deal with one email, just get to the next step.
This of course is just one example, but the approach applies to nearly every type of communication. Remember, people don’t care what you want, they are wired to think about themselves. Communicate accordingly and you might get a few more responses. Sales is a numbers game, those few replies could be the difference between hitting your goals and failure. Hopefully this was helpful. An old colleague distilled the lessons from How to Win Friends and I keep it in a note on my phone. Here they are below.
Lessons
Part 1
- Don’t criticize, condemn or complain
- Give honest and sincere appreciation
- Excite people with an eagerness/want
Part 2
- Become genuinely interested in others
- Smile
- Remember a persons name and use it!
- Encourage others to talk about themselves. Listen!
- Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
- Make the other person feel important, sincerely
Part 3
- Get the best of an argument by avoiding it
- Show respect for the other person’s opinions
- If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
- Always start in a friendly way
- Get the other person saying “yes” immediately
- Let the other person do a great deal of talking
- Let the other person feel that the idea is theirs
- Try honestly to see things from the other person’s POV
- Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas/desires
- Appeal to the nobler motives
- Dramatize your ideas
- Throw down a challenge
Part 4
- Begin with praise and honest appreciation
- Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
- Talk about your own mistakes first
- Ask questions instead of giving orders
- Let the other person save face
- Praise the slightest, and every, improvement
- Give the other person a great reputation to live up to
- Encourage. Make it seem as if faults are easy to fix
- Make the other person happy to do what you want
