How do you best approach someone if you don’t have any connections?
It’s far from ideal, and you will have a much better hit rate with a “social calling” approach, but sometimes “it is what it is” and you must go in cold.
Most people I know will opt for an email as the first attempt to reach somebody. I get it. Emails are free and you don’t get the same mental battering as having the phone hung up on you. Given that, let’s look at how you write a half-decent cold email.
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I’m a huge advocate of using human relationships to get into accounts. I really believe it’s a small world. As I’ve shown before you can get referred into 1,000’s of accounts without needing to use a cold approach.
However, sometimes you may be faced with no choice. If you’ve exhausted all your connections, and all the connections of your connections, and nothing is leading you closer to getting into the account, then you may need to resort to a cold approach. But if you do have to go in without a referral, make your chances of success as good as they can be.
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I had an interesting discussion with a friend last week. They reminded me that the biggest problem facing many salespeople and business owners is getting anyone to speak to them. This problem has gotten worse as we add new ways to communicate with each other. There’s so much to do and so much noise in our life that the last thing we want to do is waste our time with some salesperson.
But buyers are not the only “frazzled” ones…sellers are too! Sellers feel like they don’t have any time either. (Jill Konrath wrote a whole book about time management for salespeople!)
There are ways to get your time back. I’ve personally gotten a lot of time back over the last few years. If you’re time-starved try a few of these tips to get started.
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It’s critical to know your customer. What do they care about? What’s on their top 5 list? What do they do about fixing those things? What alternatives do they have?
One thing that bugs me is that 90% of the articles on this topic tell you to “look at your current customers and look for patterns amongst them, then use this information to figure out what your future customers will look like”.
OK, so this makes a bunch of sense…unless you are startup (or entering a completely new market.)
If you’re just starting, you don’t have any customers!
You cannot analyze any patterns amongst zero customers. Even when you have a few customers, how do you find meaningful patterns amongst so few data points?
As the fog starts to clear on what generative AI can do, one of the things that is starting to stand out is using it to brainstorm. Getting to know your customer is a good application for generative AI systems in my estimation. When you are starting from scratch you can lean on AI to get your creative juices flowing.
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I was asked a great question during a recent conversation with a founder: When should you take a spearfishing approach to finding new customers and when should you use a shotgun?
It depends on what you’re hunting.
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Prospecting is hard. There’s no need to make it even harder.
I’ve run dozens of experiments over the years on how to get through the door and start working with a new account. In every experiment, I’ve found that the number one factor that influences a successful outcome has been a human relationship.
The smartest piece of content has never beaten a warm introduction from another person. In my own experiments, I’ve found a referral of any kind (not necessarily from a client) to be 3.25 times more effective than a cold approach (based on time spent–it’s even more effective in terms of conversion rates.)
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