Persuasion, influence, or even simple education about a topic is central to most of the communication we send out. But readers today have too much to read and very little attention to spare. If you want to be heard, you need to hook them immediately with something they care about.
This arrived in my LinkedIn inbox today:
Hi! I don’t know you. We’ve never met. But I have a product or service I’d really like you to buy it. So let’s schedule a meeting in your busy schedule where I can convince you to buy my thing. Signed, your new LinkedIn contact.
Wow. Really? I’m impressed. I’m just falling all over myself to cancel the coaching meeting I have scheduled with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company so we can chat about the product you want to sell me. … NOT!
Drive a cold contact from their perspective
If you have a real area of expertise, and you’re attempting to foist it on, er, I mean, share it with someone, temper your sales eagerness by approaching the sale from your customers’ vantage point.
Make an impression on a sales prospect by learning a little about them: Take 2 minutes: visit their website so you know what they do. Read their LinkedIn profile and check out their interests and expertise, so you know where they put their time and attention. Then imagine what problem they might have. If you see someone is interested in “high performing organizations” and has expertise in “leading others,” the problem they might have is in influencing people in parts of the organization where they don’t work.
When you want to pitch them, start from their point of view: from the problem you believe they have. “Hi! You don’t know me, but you may be having trouble leading people beyond your immediate sphere. I’ve helped a lot of people lead from a distance using a variety of technological and in-person solutions. If you’d like a free consultation, let’s talk. Otherwise may I check back in six months?”
If you are selling a high-ticket item, you might even want ask them what problems they’re dealing with. “Hi! You don’t know me, but I work with leaders who are building high-performing organizations and need to lead people at a distance. If you have problems with that, would you mind taking 15 minutes to tell me about it, and I’ll offer any insight into solutions that might work for you?”
This approach is absolutely, utterly, completely not guaranteed to work. But it’s a lot better than reaching out one-on-one to someone with a message that’s all about your needs, rather than theirs.