The Outreach Myth - why its not ‘salesy' if you get it right

Welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarfe, a senior executive Coach with over 17 years experience coaching, which I now bring to my role as a mentor and business coach to other executive coaches. When it comes to coaching and coaching business, I have done it all. So I've grown coaching businesses solo and in partnership. I've been an in house coach and I've been an associate coach. So I when I talk about selling coaching to corporate clients, you know I'm sharing from a place of experience and empathy and having walked the walk. So I work now with coaches through my group coaching program, the Corporate to Coach accelerator where executive and leadership coaches grow their businesses with more corporate clients. So listen into this podcast for lots of practical tips, inspiring stories and prompts to grow your business your way. So I'm doing a bit of a mini series on outreach this month and if you haven't listened to last week's episode, do check it out because it is all about how outreach is such a neglected part of your business strategy. And it gives you a few ideas on how to make outreach really a part of your marketing system. Today I want to dive into one of the most common blockers to outreach and I want to share a few solutions to help you and I just want to flag that I am sharing for a limited time a resource to help you with your outreach and that is a set of templates or scripts that are aimed at helping you to get outreach done without the overthinking, without the fear and without the procrastination that can come when we don't have like that first step. So you can get that through the link in the show notes or@elliscarf.com templates it's a set of 30 client generating outreach templates really tailored for executive coaches. So head over and grab a copy of that if you think it would be helpful. Okay, so blockers to outreach, there are many. So I decided to do some research and figure out what is really getting in the way of executive coaches doing outreach in order to have more conversations with corporate clients. And it turns out, which I think I pretty much knew, it turns out the biggest, biggest blocker, the biggest fear that coaches have in that gets in the way of outreach is the fear of being salesy. Right? In those exact words, they don't want to be perceived as salesy, they don't want to feel salesy, they don't want to be judged right in that way or for some reason that is like the worst thing as coaches that we Would really hate to be described as being salesy. And there are some sub descriptions. We don't want to be pushy, we don't want to be manipulative. But I think that salesy terminology is what most people are using. And the extent of that is that of the people that I surveyed, there was a LinkedIn poll. 70% of the people that responded said that was their biggest blocker and their biggest fear when it came to their outreach. So I see you. This is you. I get it because I have been in the same position and I still have that fear. You know, I don't want to be seen as being a pushy or as being salesy, but I've done a lot of work on my mindset around what it means to be a salesperson. And so today I want to talk a little bit about how this fear is showing up and then some ways that we can get out there and do the thing, do the outreach, while also feeling like, yes, we're doing sales, but not in a way that is, you know, in somehow contradiction of our values. Right? So how this fear of being perceived to be salesy or feeling salesy shows up is as a really deep discomfort that emerges when you sit down to do your outreach. Right? When you. When you sit down inside the accelerator, we go through a process of, you know, really analyzing your network, of defining your pipeline, of going through all of that work. And so this fear comes up when you know who you want to reach out to. And that's not a given, by the way. Like, you have to do the work to figure out first, who am I reaching out to based on my ideal client definition and my network and the segmentation I've done, right? So assuming we've done that, it's when we sit down and we go, okay, now I have to write a message, and I have to write a message in a way that feels good. And the thing that comes up this is when we first see this fear, and it is a deep discomfort. It's sort of like for people, we feel it differently, but a lot of people sort of feel it as like a tension or like a gut discomfort. And it can also translate as this feeling of that you're trying to push yourself to do something that does not feel natural, that feels in some way out of alignment with your values. Right? So if you're a coach, which I hope you are, if you're listening to this podcast, in all likelihood your values are that you are very other oriented, you're in what you probably perceive to Be a helping profession. You want to help people to work through their own problems and harness all of their own resources in pursuit of their own goals. And so feeling like you are doing something that is salesy or pushy really does not align with that identity as a coach. And so that there is this discomfort, I think is based on this misalignment or this perceived misalignment between what it means to be a salesperson and what it means to be a coach. It also shows up as a feeling that we have to be pushing, right? That sales is a push activity that requires us to be, you know, forcing someone to do something or convincing someone to do something. And if that's how we feel about sales, then of course that's going to feel deeply uncomfortable. Because particularly as coaches, you know, if we look at that push pull continuum, we are very much in that pull space, right? We're all about allowing the conditions to emerge, letting the person discover their own path. And so if we have a particular idea of what sales looks like and it feels like a very push oriented process, then of course, if we are worried about being salesy, it's going to get in the way of our outreach. The other way that this fear of being salesy shows up in our outreach is in overthinking and perfectionism. Now, I suspect you will recognize yourself in this, and I always recognize myself. Anytime there's a overthinking or perfectionism, I can put my hand up and say, I have been there now, I have managed it now. But it is really common for when we are worried about being salesy. Then we start thinking about, well, how am I going to write this message in a way that is not salesy, that is authentic, but is also, you know, I don't want to be pushy, but I do want to be, you know, I am selling, right? So how do I do both? And you know, I know this person, but they haven't seen me for ages. What if they tell someone that I've sent them a message and I've also sent that person a message? What happens? And so we can get into this overthinking spiral because we are very attached to every the stakes that are involved in our outreach, how we feel that everything is high stakes. And to be honest, I kind of don't hate that because I want it to feel like there's a lot at stake. I want us as coaches to feel like we're doing important work and that, you know, we really deeply value our clients. And, you know, that's great. What's not great is when we really cycle in this, you know, editing and re editing and questioning and overthinking and rumination to the point that nothing happens. And I know that this is really common. And of course, the consequence of all of these things, so the discomfort, the feeling out of alignment with your values, the feeling of this push energy, the perfectionism and overthinking, the consequence is procrastination and avoidance. Right? We don't do it because it is painful, because it is misaligned. And so it doesn't get done. And you know, just as a little bonus, what then happens is our shoulds kick in, which is, well, but I should be doing all this outreach and I should be doing it perfectly, so what am I doing wrong? And so then we're layering on some guilt and some shame alongside our overthinking and our procrastination. And of course that means we're less likely to get it done. And we're going to start going down the, oh my God, can I really do this? Can I be in business? You know, who says I can do this? So look, it's a very common, but it's a vicious spiral and it ends in this place of stuckness and it ends in this place of avoidance, and it ends in this place of getting a bit existential about, you know, about our businesses. And so this knowing of I have to do it and I'm not doing it is what I want to help you to shift. And to be honest, this is a real problem because outreach is not optional if we want to grow our businesses, right? If you do nothing else when it comes to marketing and you just do outreach, you can succeed in growing your business. Now, there is a lot more that I hope you're doing, but if that, if there is only one thing you do, I really want it to be outreach. Outreach. And so if we're not out doing the outreach, but we're doing the posting on Instagram and we're doing the, you know, maybe we're doing the network, then we're going to find that our efforts don't materialize in those actual business development conversations that we want to have. So we really need to be working on this. So if this is you, I'm going to share a few pieces of advice because it is not optional. And the advice I have is that we've got to get our head right and we've got to get our system right when it comes to outreach. And either of those in isolation won't be enough to Solve the problem. So we need the system and we need to work on the mindset. So that's my advice. I'm going to cover both sides of the coin. So the good news for you, and there is good news, I promise, is that when we get a good system and when we work in our mindset, you it's not going to feel so uncomfortable. And it is something that the more we do, the better it feels, the more confident we get. And we get confident partly because we start seeing the results. Right. But we also get confident because we learn that it is a numbers game and we get okay with being rejected. And I don't mean like people responding and saying, oh my God, you're horrible and salesy. No, that doesn't happen. What happens is people just don't reply. And that is really normal. Normal. So my first piece of advice is that we have to view it as a numbers game. Now I don't mean this in a, you know, a transactional or a dismissive way, but what I want you to know is that no matter how closely connected you once were or are to the people that you're reaching out to, the majority of them will not reply. Right. And I mean that the majority of. So I would say if you get anything over a 25% reply to your outreach messages, then you are doing really well. If you're getting below that, you're still doing well. If you're getting like less than 10%, then I want you to work on what you're saying in those messages and I've got tools for you which as you know, which I'll share again. But I hope that those numbers are helpful because I want to normalize that. You have to do a volume of outreach in order to start the wheels turning and get the scale of, you know, conversations that you need to grow a business. And that's why I'm often talking about volume. I'm talking about like it's the strategy but it's also the volume is equally important. Now I'm not talking about cold outreach obviously. And cold outreach is like a huge numbers game, right? We need to be sending thousands of messages to get even a few responses. But when we're talking about warm outreach, we still need to normalize that not every message is going to be, you know, it's not going to hit someone. Someone might be on holidays, it might not be the right time for their organization. They might just not be interested. They might have another provider. There are so many reasons and we need to not crystal ball gaze about why they're not replying. We just need to know that if we send enough, we will start and good messages, we will start to, you know, generate client conversations. And that's what we want to be doing. I also want to say, if it helps to take a bit of a load off or a bit of pressure off, that you don't send a message and that is your last chance to ever talk to that person, right? So I know a lot of people can feel that way, can feel like, well, I've had my chance, I've sent my one message and well, that's it now. And the truth is that's not the case. And sometimes it's the second or the third message. And I do not mean like hammering them with back to back messages. I mean, you might reach out in a month, you might reach out in three months with, you know, perhaps your initial message didn't get a reply, but in three months you see an article and you think, hey, I think that person, that could be a value, right? There's an opportunity for you to reach out. Then there's no rule, right, that says it's one and done. Of course, I don't ever want us to be spamming people. So if it's on email, it's a bit different. I don't want us to be harassing people, hassling them, feeling like they, you know, are just getting bombarded by messages. Absolutely not. But take a bit of pressure off because you do get a second chance if it's not right. Particularly because, like if you think about yourself sometimes you don't reply to things and it's not anything personal, it's just that it's not the right time or you saw it, got distracted and so we get to follow up. So numbers game is my first piece of advice. The second piece of advice I have is that you need to do a little bit of work before you do your outreach around becoming deeply in love with what you do. And I say in love with your offers, right? I want you to really have your belief in the value of your offers and services. I want that to be front of mind when you do your outreach now, not because in your outreach you're going to be saying, hey, here's what I do. Would you like it? Not at all. You probably won't mention your offers at all. But when you are deeply convicted by the positive impact of what you do, you come to those conversations, those outreach messages with a really different energy. And so I think it's really important to say, you know, do your own work. Why is what I do so important? How do I deeply believe in the value of it? How am I connected to the positive impact that my offers have on individuals, organizations, communities, the world? It makes it so much easier. So I encourage you to do that. The next piece of advice I have is, in your outreach is have a whole lot less, I guess, ask energy than you think you might need to. Yes. So what that means to have like low ask outreach is I don't want you pitching in your outreach messages. Right. I don't want you asking interrogatory, deep, personal, reflective questions when you send those messages. And you know, it's like, hey, you know, it was, I saw on your post that you have a new role. What are the biggest challenges you're grappling with as you go into this? And this person's like, I haven't spoken to you in 10 years. I'm not telling you that. So don't have too many asks in your outreach. It needs to be easy for them to connect. So connect first, reflect first. Bring the points of connection or reflection in your messages. Like that's kind of it. Keep them short. There should not be a lot, lot of demand on the person you send it to. So that is something to keep in mind. Now, all of the templates that I'm sharing that you can download@elliscarv.com templates or in the show notes, all of those are built with this in mind. These are low ask and they do include like a broad range. Like in some cases there is a light ask. In some case there is like a, a gentle sharing. But I'm not suggesting because I know it doesn't work. I'm not suggesting that you ask these questions that people really don't want to answer because they don't feel like you have earned that your connection is not strong enough to hold that yet. Okay. So low ask outreach is really important. Another piece of advice I have is to really do a bit of reflection on, let's say someone were to say, to think or to say that you actually, you are salesy, right? And I want you to think about how does it land? How would you react and what is the worst that could happen if someone were to have that conclusion. Now I've had that a few times. Like I walk the talk. I DO outreach on LinkedIn all the time and I've had a few people reply to me and I'm, you know, I've done a lot, so you know, very few. But there are people who've Made some nasty comments or some barbed sort of responses. And initially, the first time it happened, I went into a bit of a spiral. I was like, oh, my God, I am turning into the person that I hate. I'm a pushy salesperson. I'm awful. No one will want to work with me. It's the end of the world. Of course, right? That's my automatic negative thoughts. Now, where I went to from there could have been, so therefore I'm going to stop. And I considered it, right? But what landed for me and the way that helped me to reframe it is, I mean, firstly, I have so many clients that I help with this work, and I help through my paid programs, but also through the free content that I'm putting out there and sharing and masterclasses and workshops and tools and all of the above. So I feel really good that I'm helping people in a very positive and valuable way. So I connect to that. And then I connected to this fact that if I don't sell my work, I don't get to have that impact, right? I don't get to help people. So I connected to that and I connected to this more personal driver, which is that I want to be a role model for my daughter. I want to be a significant contributor to the financial security of my family. And so if I want to do that, it is not optional for me to sell. It is part of who I am. It is part of what I do. And as a business owner and coach, I can't separate that. I actually have to sell it. And I do want those things, and I want them really deeply. So I've connected. Like when someone comes back to me and says something negative, I'm like, okay, let me go back to the reasons why I'm doing this. And then I feel good, and then I go into a bit of what we call fear setting, right? What is the truly the worst that can happen when someone accuses me of being salesy? And the worst that can happen, or the worst that did happen, is that person did not buy my offer. And that person sent me a message that sent me into a bit of a spiral. And I was like, can I handle those consequences? I mean, firstly, yes, God, I don't want them in my program, right, because they're clearly not my people. And then secondly, can I handle those feelings I'm having about what it means to be criticized? And I've got a really high need to be liked and to be valued, all of that. And so the question is, have I done Enough work on myself that I can sit with those uncomfortable feelings. And the truth is I absolutely can. And so now that I've done it, I can do it again. And I can do it again and again. And so really thinking through what is the worst that can happen if someone thinks you're salesy? Now, if I go really extreme, let's think of the worst. Worst, right? Let's say you send a message to a friend of a friend, a connection, you thought you were close and they sent something back saying, oh my God, how dare you? I am not someone you can contact about business. Right? Worst case scenario, okay, so they're not going to become a client, they're not going to introduce you to anyone. So it's not an opportunity. Okay, I think we can handle that because we assume that the majority of people won't be. They might tell your mutual friend that you are dreadfully salesy and manipulative. Well, that friend is probably the one that's connected you so that friend actually believes in you and what you do. So it's probably okay. Worst case scenario, they might post it all over the Internet, right? Say, never work with this person because they call themselves a coach and they're trying to develop business. And what happens? You never get a client, you end up homeless. And this is Anthony Grant, who was my coaching lecturer at Sydney University. He always suggested we just keep following that bouncing ball, right? So we end up homeless, our families leave us, we end up injecting heroin into our eyeballs. And what Anthony said was that if you get to that point and you're not laughing, right, and you don't see that of course this is never going to happen, then that's time to go to therapy. But we all know as we follow this bouncing ball that there's a difference between the very worst case scenario that we can imagine and what is likely to happen. And what is likely to happen is simply that person doesn't become a client. That's it. Right? And we know that most people won't anyway. So following that, what's the worst that could happen? Is a great tool for you to think through. And I would encourage you to do that perhaps first, right? Maybe that's the first thing we do is when we sit down to do our outreach, we go, okay, what's the worst that can happen? If someone thinks I'm salesy, they don't buy from me. That's it. And then I want you to go into really thinking about, you know, your deep conviction in the value of your offer. Because if we can say, okay, well here my automatic negative thoughts, here are some performance enhancing thoughts. And that's a tool that is in the positivity prescription by Dr. Susie Green. If we can do that, then we're going to come at our outreach from this place of feeling much more expansive, much more positive energy and you know, really being able to lean into the curiosity and the, you know, this positive, I guess, the vibes, to be honest. And that's going to help us to show up in a much more positive, energetic space. So those are some tools. The final advice that I have for you is use tools available to you inside my program, the corporate to Coach Accelera. One of the tools that I have available is a set of outreach templates that my clients can customize and I'm making that available to you for a limited time. This tool, which you can see in the show notes or grab over at elliscarf.com forward/templates. It covers many of the most common scenarios when you might do outreach and not know exactly what to say. They are all customizable. So you take this template and then you add, personalize, add the details about the person, about your connection and bring it to Life. There are 30 templates. They cover scenarios including things like how do you reach out to someone who's liked Your post on LinkedIn without sounding, I don't know, like you're stalking for people to click like or something like that and do it in a way that's not, not too creepy. It might be a past client, it might be an old colleague, it might be a connection whose insights you would value on the market. We've got some tools to think about. How might you connect by sharing something of value, like a resource or an article. We share a scenario when you might want to share a bit of an announcement or when you're following up a connection from a networking event or you want to reach out to a friend of a friend, or you're following up on a conversation. There's so many different scenarios that are covered and you know, I would really love you you to use that to help you go from overthinking to get it out the door. And you know, along with that, I think we need to have this energy of not. It doesn't have to be perfect. So if you adapt a message and you feel like it's 80 or 90%, do it, send it, don't overthink it, see what the results are. And you always get to say, okay, I've sent this batch of say, you know, 20 or 30 messages. I'm going to give it a couple of days, I'm going to see what the response is and then I'm going to adapt to my approach based on the response I get. So do certain types of messages do better? Am I getting response from certain, you know, areas of my network better? How can I use that information? Okay, so as I mentioned, grab a copy of that resource@elliscarf.com templates or the link in the show notes. It's only going to be available for a limited time, so I recommend going and grabbing it. And as always, please reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. That is where I share a lot of tips, ideas, reflections. I always make sure to post about these episodes so you don't miss any. Head on over there. Let me know what you think. So if you download and use the resource, I've already had a number of people from last week telling me that they found it helpful and it spurred them on. So please don't miss out. Head over and grab a copy of it. As always, I'll be back next week with more practical ideas for growing your executive coaching business.