My friends occasionally accuse me of being a grumpy old man, a description that I disagree with! However, I do struggle to not get grumpy about some things, particularly things that are not done as well as they could be done. Everyone should want to do their job as well as they can and when they do not, I get a bit grumpy.
In particular, I get frustrated by cold approaches from other businesses, particularly ones that sell lead generation services. Their business is about finding new business for other companies but they do not do a great job winning new work for themselves so how good a job do they do for other people?
I get these cold approaches almost every day and two things really frustrate me about them.
Firstly, my business is all about teaching other people to sell better. That should suggest that I know how to sell, probably have quite a lot of experience selling and can find new opportunities for myself. Some simple research should tell you that so why would anyone think that I need lead generation services?
Secondly, if they are representing my company, they need to do a better job than they are doing when they approach me. If I do not believe that I need the service, just offering it to me is not going to make me change my mind. You have to tell me something that makes me change the way that I think about the problem.
I got approached by a company recently and they made no effort to find or suggest a need that I might have. They wrote, “I’d love to arrange a brief chat early next week about how my company can help Hoolock Consulting with a steady flow of warm leads across multiple channels.” They wrote about how they did this and suggested a meeting. Nothing about understanding my needs or suggesting how they are different to anyone else.
I ignored the message so they followed up with two other messages before sending me this:
“I've got to say - over the last few weeks you've proven your email endurance is pretty epic.
As you know, I've been hoping to speak with you. Have I fallen short? Perhaps, but I wanted to acknowledge your dedication.”
I really do not know what to make of this. Do they think this is likely to make me change my mind? Why would I do something different because of this? Is this how they approach all potential customers?
I have written extensively about change and sales. If you want someone to buy something, you first have to persuade them to change. Everything that we buy changes us and we have to be comfortable with that change before we are happy to buy. If all you ever do is offer your product or service, you are hoping that your potential customer is just at the point where they have decided to buy which is highly unlikely. If you want to be successful, you first have to persuade them to change then their decision to buy will be much easier.
You can read more about this here: https://www.hoolock-consulting.com/blog/2022/9/9/catalyst-for-sales