Unfortunately bad outreach on platforms like LinkedIn is getting more common, so what can you do about it?
Well one of the first things is to make sure your team aren’t doing it!
It would be easy, to just criticise people who pitch slap you on LinkedIn, so in an effort to do the thing I’m good at, which is help people get better at selling, here (to use the Blue Peter term) is one I prepared earlier.
Let’s analyse what this person did wrong and what they could have done better.
Now it’s pretty obvious it’s AI, so let’s start with that:
🟣 ‘Hey’
🙄 right, I’m British and none of us – I repeat none of us – in the UK start a conversation with that
It screams AI
Also, is ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello’ such a stretch?
🟣 ‘Convo’
Yuck, yuck, yuck. Who has a ‘convo’? Pass me the sick bag
If you can’t spell conversation, there are loads of other super words you could use – meeting, chat, call. See – they’re not long or difficult
🟣 See the red circles? These are all the times they said ‘I’ – in other words, there’s loads of what’s in it for them and much less about what’s in it for me (4 lots of you/yours)
So this is self-centric and not customer centric. Increase the ‘yous’ and reduce the ‘I’s
🟣 In blue, we have the attempt to show that there is some synergy. ‘I saw that you have experience in company training, specifically sales coaching’ – No s**t Sherlock? Blimey, that must have taken some research (or a simple data scrape)
So that’s just lazy. Go to my profile – reference a post I’ve written or something interesting. I am a human and there is lots there if you look
🟣Right, so the elephant in the room is the pitch-slap. In yellow – they state they thought it would be great to connect, then WHALLOP! Pitch!
No effort to get to know me, no previous comments on posts, no relationship building. Now I reckon this is probably some sort of software they are pushing, so clearly this is a numbers-game approach and maybe a real person will never care about my feedback, BUT it means I block them and their company, so no future opportunities there
I always consider my reputation with my clients. So if I don’t like the way you approach me, there is NO WAY I am going to inflict you on my lovely customers.
🟣 ‘I would love to get to know some of your pain points!’ Yay! Let’s all be really happy talking about pain points!!!!
No, let’s not. Let’s be respectful – if I have pain points it might be a celebration for you, but my issues probably mean I don’t feel like giving you a high-five about it
🟣The second message was only one working day after the first message. It uses the phrase ‘bugging you’. Honestly, you are just trying twice? Is that it? Also, you are bringing into play a negative phrase, which literally made me think ‘yes you ARE bugging me’.
So here the lesson is to either NOT annoy someone, or not to use the word. And genuinely, relating to an earlier point, if they had reached out properly, then no bugging would have occurred.
So if your people are sending out this sort of dreadful message, let’s chat. If nothing else, I’ll stop them getting blocked!