Reps, do your homework!

I got a pretty interesting email to my business account the other day.

Remember, this was a B2B solicitation.

To begin, it was as spammy as they come from a start-up, so after I had researched that it was not from a Nigerian prince or another phishing scam, I responded and, uncharacteristically I got a response.

I may have been a bit harsh with my criticism, but sales is a contact sport, if you can’t take tough love, maybe this isn’t a career for you.

Then I decided to write up my thoughts and hopefully help a prospector out there get 1% better today.

The initial email

 First, let's look at the email.

Starts off great, "Quick Request", not my go to subject line, but if it Robert Cialdini says asking for help works, then why not.

Then it starts to go off the rails.

She asks who sources voice-over talent.

Voice-over talent?

That is a very specific ask. I'm a sales & marketing analyst, probably not in my wheelhouse, however she does ask if I can refer her. Ok that gets a pass.

Did she look at my company? It seems like a company that has lots of videos, podcasts, stuff like that would fit into their ideal customer profile. What made her think, or rather the person who loaded this email into their marketing automation system Pardot, that FatStax would be a good fit? We are not bursting at the seams with video content.

Then there is a link to something that would indicate that they could make my life easier. That link takes me to a landing page with YouTube video.

YouTube?

Even I know YouTube doesn’t exude professionalism. It isn’t hard to set up an embedded video using Wistia and get great metrics. Don’t like Wistia? There are plenty of professional video hosting services out there that provide powerful marketing metrics and embed into your site elegantly.

Then she promotes a video about solving the voice-over sourcing problem. Guess what, it is the same landing page with the same YouTube video.

Remember, this is an introduction email.

 The goal of an introductory email is to get my attention and get me to respond. That was the goal, right? Or was the goal to drive me to the video? This email needs some focus.

Also, this was to my business email. Why not JUST focus on sourcing voice-over talent, why include the ‘be a voice-over talent’ tab. Uni focused, dedicated landing pages are a great way to funnel your prospects.

Then there are a couple of postscripts.

Yes, I’ve read the research, postscripts are where you can load all the marketing collateral you want to dump on people, but can’t build a good story about them. In a word, this is feature dumping, hoping that someone clicks around and eventually something sticks.

In the words of one of my sales leaders Fred Pazos, “hope is not a winning strategy.”

The call

So I responded and much to my surprise, I got a call back within 20minutes. In many years of doing this, I got a response.

Kudos here. They are doing something right. My response was triaged, someone dialed my number and got me.

After I answered and confirmed my identity, the caller asked me to tell her about my business.

Wait, what? You emailed me. Shouldn’t you surely know something about my business?

I asked if she looked at my company website. That was in process. How long does it take to review a website? I inquired how she could help, so again she asked about my business.

Then I asked the ultimate question; did she even bother to look me up on LinkedIn.

Nope.

For B2B sales it is imperative to review the company website, have a clue how they could fit a customer profile and check out their LinkedIn profile to get some insight into their personality (shoutout to CrystalKnows www.crystalknows.com). A quick look at my profile and you’d see that I’ve been working in sales and sales ops for over a decade. I write about sales; I like to think I think deeply on sales.

Now I’m working at a sales acceleration tool company, training sales hunters, and selling to VP Sales of fortune 1000 companies. I’m always in thinking sales.

Also, I went to university in the town where this company is located. So many hooks to grab me.

It was at this point I gave my advice. 

I told the caller, no, this is not how this works. 

You need to have a clue whom you are calling and how you can provide value. It is ok to ask questions, but showing up ill-prepared is not going to cut it in the current age of information overload.

Yes, I’m happy to answer questions you have about my business, but no I don’t have time to do your job for you.

Sales is hard, even when you are well-prepared you will still get kicked in the teeth. Working in an organization that has a spray and pray philosophy, then throws sales reps to the front lines with little and or inadequate training is doing both the reps and the company a disservice.

It isn’t like there is a secret to good prospecting, we all have our own style, and it isn’t like there is a dearth of information on the subject, there is a ton of great advice out there and more coming every day.

On my short list of people and organizations I follow to gain advice in this area are (in no particular order, sorry if I missed any, and I will edit if I remember more, please add in comments); Trish Bertuzzi / The Bridge Group, John Barrows, Keenan, Grant Cardone, Craig Elias, Craig Rosenberg / TOPO, Anthony Iannarino, HubSpot their blog is awesome, Isaac Miranda, and please append your favorite sales guru in the comments  

Just the other day I saw an excellent article on DiscoverOrg’s blog about awesome emails. https://discoverorg.com/blog/sales-prospecting-absd-cold-email-examples/

Prospecting is hard, very hard. To be successful you need to be continually upping your game, I may not be an expert, but I’m trying to improve myself 1% every day.

The question is whether the rep will listen to my harsh advice or think I just a big ol’ jerk for being mean. 

About the author

Following an academic career, Mark moved into business development and has been the critical early sales hire at start-ups that have grown to become global brands in scientific publishing and IT security. Currently, Mark is a sales and marketing analyst at FatStax, a digital catalog system used by some of the largest and most successful sales team worldwide.

Read more of Mark's articles here and follow him on Twitter

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