Five Tips for Outreach that Puts You Top of Mind and Not on the "Canceled" List

We have all gotten the zombie drip campaign e-mails.  The post conference emails thanking me for stopping by a supplier’s booth (I didn’t) and offering a solution for which a simple review of my website would reveal that I am not a prospect. 

And worse:  a follow up email with a vaguely challenging tone about why I haven’t responded.  “You must be busy.”  My response?  “You’re canceled!”

Knowing who is really a target for your services and how to engage them is paramount for creating an effective outbound marketing campaign.   And the dirty secret is that you can only automate it so far, before it takes on the “zombie” tone, and you are effectively deleted.

The reality of business development and selling B2B services, particularly for market research or analytics solutions, was set out in stark relief by the Ehrenberg Bass Institute,  in a study conducted for the LinkedIn B2B institute several years ago. 

Essentially it says that 95% of your customers are not in the market to buy your services today, and reaching the 5% of the market who are “in the market” at any given time is the sweet spot for conversion. 

It is easy to understand how sales and marketing teams want to stay “top of mind” for that unpredictable moment when a prospect’s needs become immediate.  But most “spray and pray” automated drip campaigns for outreach are simply not intelligent enough to catch the prospect who is suddenly in the magic 5%. 

Pushing out the “we do this ... do you want some?” emails when a prospect is not in buying mode and following up with “did you see my last e-mail?” is the fastest way to get on my “canceled” list.  Worse this is a sure-fire way get me to block you or unsubscribe, so that the moment I AM in the market, I have tuned you out.

So what can business development and sales teams do?

No one likes to hear this, but the answer really is work harder.  (Which probably about now puts me on YOUR “canceled list”!)

The tips I share with clients may not make working harder easier, but at least gives you a framework to humanize and make outbound outreach activities more effective. 

First: Take the time to know your audience and the contacts you want to convert.

You can’t do this with thousands of prospects and a random automated email outreach solutions with generic messaging.  Doggedly identify your ideal next clients, learning all you can about the signals that might put them in the magic 5% category.  And fuel your messaging accordingly!

• What do they sell and to what audience of buyers/consumers? And what kind of research services do they buy?
• Is their buying cycle for research services ad hoc or an annual review of incumbents for multi-year engagements? 
• Do their research challenges address seasonality in their selling environments?  (Time your messaging precisely. Don’t talk to a buyer about planning their holiday ad campaigns or packaging in November!  You are late by months and will be showing your naivete!)
• Has your prospect’s company announced creating a new category or products or are they entering new markets? 
• Is their company being disintermediated by a new entrant in the category?  Or is your target the new category disruptor?

Yes, it takes work, but buyers want to buy from sellers who demonstrate knowledge of their company, industry and their distinct challenges, proving you are uniquely qualified to serve them. 

Second: Don’t expect immediate conversion.

Your marketing teams are most probably working hard to publish and build your brand awareness in the marketplace around the business problems your company solves. Not your methods and tools, but the results your clients achieve when they deploy them.

LinkedIn is a perfect place to publish, and compelling content gets prospects to engage. 

Every post is a seed that might not yield results today but adds to a cumulative inventory of assets to use in outreach.  And then . . . it is really up to you in the sales team to know how (and when) to leverage these assets strategically. 

“One and done” rarely works in outreach.  Not everybody will see your posts in real time, but this content is perfect (often evergreen) to send when engaging someone new or following up with a lead. 

You need tenacity and patience because it takes sharing thought leadership content consistently to convert sales opportunities when a prospect enters that 5% realm of need. 

Third: Make your messaging relevant.

Nothing turns off a prospect more than a message that is total a waste of time because it has NO relevance to the business challenges they face. Whatever you do, try to make your outreach meaningful to their worlds. 

If you can reference something you saw them (or their company) publish, or something relevant to their industry or category, where maybe your company can help, it shows that you are actually putting in the time and effort to earn their attention. ESPECIALLY if they aren’t currently or immediately in the magic 5%!

Fourth: Don’t make dumb mistakes. 

Automated drip campaigns are full of potholes that are just waiting to trip up folks blindly following a sequence.  I can’t tell you how annoying it is to me to get a personalized email to “Dear Griffin” where the CRM system has clearly somehow flipped the first and last name fields.  You need to make sure you are not automatically excluded from the consideration set for silly errors. 

Have I sent emails with typos?  Sadly yes, and it has painfully taught me that I need to slow down, avoid the temptation to take short cuts, and not rely solely on the tech like predictive text, and increasingly AI tools. 

Finally: Don’t always make your outreach about YOU. 

In fact, I would say NEVER start from the point of what you are hoping to accomplish (the appointment, the demo, the meeting) but more to demonstrate that you want to help your prospect accomplish THEIR goals. 

Find something you know, or suspect, is of interest to your prospect, and forward it on in the spirit of “saw this and thought of you”.

And sometimes just send a prospect something that could be useful to them with NO expectation of anything in return.  I do this myself because it demonstrates to prospects the humanity exemplified in one of my favorite Virginia Woolf quote: 

“In case you ever foolishly forget, I am never not thinking of you.”

Of course, the ultimate goal is to convert a prospect to a client, but building relationships versus transactions will help you keep them.

Power your outreach to convert the 5%! 

This is all much more time consuming than an automated drip sequence for sure.  But try these tips, to make yourself memorable. And most importantly, to establish yourself as the “human” your prospect remembers they can turn to, when they DO emerge as a member of the magic 5%.

“In case you ever foolishly forget, I am never not thinking of you.”

Virginia Woolf