Research before you pitch. Don't just mention someone's name or hobby. Show you understand their specific challenges, like time pressure or work-family balance. Every message to a busy executive must deliver value immediately, not ask for their time first.
So this one is for my subscribers, all 10 of you. I've been hearing a lot lately about personalization and research, and most of that is coming from LinkedIn, from sales leaders. And they're right, you need to research your prospects. you need to personalize. But what I'm seeing a lot of is very shallow discussion around research and personalization. They're telling you to do it. They're not explaining why. Why do we research? Why do we personalize? The reason that I research each customer is not because I want to show them what a good researcher I am. It's because I want them to know That I understand their industry, their business, and that I can make strategic decisions based on research. So for me, because I'm in marketing and I'm reaching out about marketing, I'm doing the research to show them that I know how I would market their company. Before we even engage. Now, later I'm going to do a discovery. I'm going to deep dive. I'm going to get to know their business better from their mouth. But first, I'm going to show them that I understand their space, that I understand their buyers, and that I know changes that we could make that would make a difference. So that's what, that's what the research is for me, right? That's why I go look at their website. That's why I look at their LinkedIn. Later, I can use that information to pull more out of my prospects, to get them to tell me more about themselves. But I'm not reaching out to be like, hey Joe, I saw you're a dad. That's not, that's not relevant. What is relevant is saying, hey Joe, I'm sending this email on the back of dropping all my kids off at school. I've got 4 of them. It was a crazy drop-off day. Here you can watch this quick video. I explain How that went, and I showed show them the funny video of me telling the tale, and then I ask if they have kids, and if they do have kids, is that putting pressure on their time? And what are their responsibilities at work? And how is work taking away from their kids? And could I help them by outsourcing you know some of their marketing, some of their sales training, so that they can spend more time with their family? That's a relevant conversation to have. So just pointing out that somebody has kids, or that they have a wife, or that they're in. Interested in sports. That's not personalization. Personalization is about rapport building. It's about going deeper and getting someone to have a human conversation with me so that we can develop a connection and I can understand their pain points. Personalization is about showing you did your research, but in a way that's relevant. It's not just Hey, I looked at your LinkedIn profile. It's I looked at your LinkedIn profile, and I had specific takeaways. Is this what you're actually trying to put out there? You know what they say about when you assume. It's true with prospects too. So if you're looking at someone's job profile, and you're saying, hey, based on you being title at company, I assume you have this problem. Can I fix it for you? You're putting the cart before the horse. You need to reach out with something that's personalized to problems that you know that they have, because you actually took a look, and it's not an assumption based on a title. It's, it's a conclusion built on an understanding of their role and an understanding of their company and the space that they operate in. And if you can't do that, you need more training, you need more understanding of your product, you need more understanding of how you help people. Because at the end of the day, reaching out to someone, whether it's email, LinkedIn, a phone call, it's about bringing value to them. And if you're not bringing them value, you're wasting their time. And especially if you're selling into director or above in a B2B atmosphere, That time is worth a lot of money. I mean, I make $300 an hour, um, for my consulting hours. When I was a VP of sales, my time was probably worth even more than that to my company. Um, you need to understand when you're asking someone for their time, that is the most valuable trade resource on the planet. Time. Time is money. Time is love. Time is with our families. It's everything, right? We only have so much time in a day. And when you ask someone for their time, you should be giving them immediate value, an immediate return on the investment of their time. And if you can't do that, well, either the product or the service is bad, or you don't understand it yet. You're not understanding what you do for your clients. Either way, Back to the drawing board, figure it out, and start sending messages to people, calling people with value. Do your research, personalize, but understand what that really means. It's not just inserting somebody's name or title or the company that they work at or the day of the week or the type of weather they're experiencing, you know. Um, it is about understanding what you can do for them and how you can make them go look good to their boss, to their company, to their investors. Um, you need to understand who they're accountable to and make them the hero in the conversation. Um, that's it for today. If you have questions, drop them in the comments. Um, and, you know, shoot me an email if you want to have a deeper dive and talk more about your product or service and how you can be Doing relevant research and entering personalization into your outreach that will actually connect instead of falling flat. Oh, and like and follow me, you know.
