Pitching on Your First Message?

About two months ago I posted about an experiment I ran in regards to vendors trying to sell you on LinkedIn. Recently, Paul Salamanca posted alluding that process to a kid telling you they love you in exchange for something, because, “you can see it coming from a mile away”. I liked that analogy so I did some additional digging into my experiment to see if in fact there was a strong bias to selling on the first message as opposed to going through a more rigorous discovery period. 

In fact my data showed that in fact people selling on LinkedIn do tend to sell through the first message. 70% of vendors selling through LinkedIn attempted to sell me on the first message, 27% on the second message and 3% on the third message (quick note here that this data is significant as I used an n factor of >30 for all you statisticians out there). None of these conversations got to a fourth message. The reason being they pitched me in the first second or third message. This from a prospect’s perspective is incredibly challenging. The less information I have, the less of a chance there is that I will be willing to jump on a phone call. So for the 70% of vendors that pitch on the first message, you’re doing a disservice to both yourself and your prospect. Leaders are always looking for ways to better their organization. Trying to sell now doesn’t have the same stigmas as it may have years earlier. Allowing yourself and your prospect time to go through discovery is an extremely valuable part of your sales process and can’t just be glazed over. Think of it like installing software to your computer; you’re not going to try to run the program prior to your computer installing the software as the program won’t run no matter how many times you click. It doesn’t matter what medium you’re selling through, ensure you don’t skip over the process. In addition the “spray and pray” method (copyright coming) will make the client relationship strenuous on your success team if you have rushed through the discovery process.  

Breaking down the data further I analyzed the cadence of each message. The messages for the most part broke down for me into three different buckets: The first was a broad based attempt to humanize the connection request, “Noticed we have some of the same connections”. The second was a broad control Z, control V question, “How do you get leads for you sales team” the third was some sort of compliment “Noticed how much you’ve accomplished and it’s very impressive”. 

When selling, no matter what platform you're on, think about how your prospect would answer your question if you cold called them. If you called an operator out of the blue and said, “Noticed we have some of the same connections” would that get you another question on the phone or would I be thinking to myself, “Okay"? If you contacted me and asked me where I get my leads, is your expectation that I’m going to explain our demand generation strategy and model? This will certainly not keep me on the phone as we have weekly meetings in regards to our demand generation status updates. Lastly, the compliment goes back to what Paul referenced “what do you want”.

Your approach needs to answer the basic question: How can you keep me interested on the phone? Don’t know any of those questions? Give Josh Braun a follow or take his course. His content speaks specifically to this. Ensure that whenever you reach out to someone you have a specific reason for contacting them. 

As I went through all of the individual takeaways of this experiment I tried to boil them down to one actionable takeaway: If for whatever reason you find yourself selling on the first, LinkedIn message to a cold prospect you’ve just connected with, stop. Ask yourself why would this person buy from you or schedule a demo with you? Not because you’re nice or the service/ product you’re selling is the best thing since podcasts, but what real reasons are they buying for you? Specifically, what problem are you solving for me? Think of it like an equation. While you can build a complex equation for a process like MEDIC (or whatever process your sales team is using) let’s for this case be as basic as we can. X+Y=Z. X is my business problem, Y is your product or service and Z is a deal. You don’t get Z without both X and Y. Ask the right questions and you may not get the answer you’re looking for, but if you do, then everyone will be better off for it.