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You’ve seen it all before. Your mobile rings and you don’t know the person, so you just let it go to voice mail.
Or somebody emails you. Sales emails don’t usually say “buy my stuff” like they did ten years ago, there is usually some “bait” or a “trip wire” to pull you in.
Anyway, I get an email from a salesman. Let’s call him Andrew. I won’t embarrass him, he is only doing his job and probably what he has been told to do.
In the email he stated that he could set me up meetings with Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) which, on the face of it, seems intriguing. This, I guessed, was a trip wire.
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Simple solution
I pop over to LinkedIn and check Andrew out.
His job title is “Account Manager – Events” a salesperson selling events in other words.
So, it’s obvious to me Andrew is trying to sell me something and I delete his email.
(Actually, I didn’t. I once asked my Facebook network if it OK if anybody tried to sell me something if I went back and pitched my book on social selling. It was. I do.)
But best-selling authors to one side, surely everybody does this now?
I was asked recently how I felt about my email. Very easy I said. Delete, delete, block, delete, etc…
Now, in the words of Oscar Wilde “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”.
Inspire me and I will reply to your email. I might even call
I’m not advocating lying on your LinkedIn profile, but if Andrew had a profile that was interesting, inspiring, funny, through provoking, looked like he might be able to tell me something I didn’t know, could help me, guide me, give me something I don’t have, I would have emailed him back. Better still (for Andrew) I might have called him up.
Maybe his email ended up with all the other cold emailers, “in the bin”.
As a seller and marketer, you have to understand that the market is now more competitive than at any time in the history of the world. Globalisation and the internet means that anybody can break down your value proposition bit by bit from a garage in Shoreditch in London.
For example, the number of applications in the marketing technology (Martech) space is now 5,000 and growing. You have to stand out, because your marketing last year isn’t good enough anymore. You, your salespeople and your employees have to be social. I don’t mean you train them to push your marketing materials, you need to be pulling. You need to stand out, be better than your competition and give me a reason to want to call you!
Prospects now don’t just research you to short list, they research you to deselect you. If you are not going to help me and my business in some shape or form then you are against me.
Seller beware.