Stop Sending Generic Messages: Cold Outreach Reality

So, I don't know about you, but I'm absolutely sick and tired of all of the spam which drops into my various inboxes. And in fact, somebody shared a word with me that one made me chuckle because it's a new word for spam. It's called SPIM. But SPIM stands for spam that arrives via instant messenger, and that could be whether it's WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or any of the instant messaging services that are now available out there. So I'm on an anti-spam mission right now to try and help people to do better outreach. Now equally, I know that not many people are probably going to listen to this video, especially those already sending out thousands of spam emails and DMs on a daily basis. But maybe if we can turn one or two towards the light side versus the dark side, then I think that would be a mission from this video. So what I'm going to be sharing with you is 3 ways to do cold outreach that really connects with people and builds meaningful relationships with them, as opposed to annoying them, which is basically what spam does. Now, I suppose first of all, it's really important to define what spam is because not everybody will probably understand this, especially the people who are Gen Zs out there just starting up businesses. They'll see loads of other people doing cold outreach and sending out thousands of messages on a daily basis and think that that's the right way to do it. In fact, there are actually some well-known experts out there purporting to be showing people how to send out all of this cold outreach. And unfortunately, I think some people naively probably see that as Everybody else is doing it, therefore I should do it. Equally with the advent of AI. Now, I'm not anti-AI per se. I think AI is brilliant. But again, just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should. So because there are all these AI tools out there which enable us to send out all of these automated DMs and things like that, doesn't necessarily mean that that's the right way to do it. And I suppose we have to look at really why are people turning to things like AI and automation to send all of this outreach out cold? to people they don't necessarily know. And I think the major reason is that it's hard enough running a business in this day and age anyway, let alone spending all of your days doing marketing, when the reality is probably whether you're a coach or an accountant or a consultant or a graphic designer, you probably just want to be whiling away your days doing the thing which you love the most rather than getting onto social media and various other forms of marketing and things like that that are out there and available to you that you can do. But typically they take an awful lot of time. So I think some people maybe don't have the time, maybe they're struggling to pay their mortgage or put food on the table and look after their family. So they get a little bit desperate and they want to speed up the process of getting to sales. And the thing is, we all know that if you want to make some sales, you've probably gotta do a little bit of marketing. And ultimately, if we can speed up the marketing process and reach more people, well, then maybe that would be a good way to grow a business. Unfortunately though, and maybe it's just for millennials like me who are in their 30s and 40s, maybe we're the only sort of generation that are annoyed by spam, I don't know. But the trouble is, for me, dealing with spam is like a sunk cost. Essentially what it means is that I'm spending 20 or 30 minutes a day going through all of this mess and chaos of messages. And yeah, I could probably be a little bit better with my spam filters and use an AI tool to filter out my DMs and things like that. But the reality is I'm losing money because of that. I'm losing time. And I don't really want to have to buy more software or pay a VA to go through my inboxes for me. I don't get any real benefit, financial benefit from that. It doesn't really help me to grow my business. I suppose the 20— you could argue the 20 or 30 minutes I'm spending sifting through them, I could be using that time better. But hey ho. Anyway, the thing which you're here for and the thing which I promised in this video was 3 strategies which you could use instead of doing loads of spam and cold DMs to potentially start to reach out to people and attract your ideal client, which is far better in my opinion. And I'm actually going to do another video talking through the stats and numbers of how I use this methodology with just 19 leads that I'd received. Saved and turned that into £18,000 worth of new business. But first of all, I'm just going to give you the 3 strategies. So, and they're really simple, anybody can do this, the tools are available to do it. And I know from my experience and my clients' experiences that these 3 things do tend to cut through a lot of the noise where cold DMs and spams and stuff like that generally doesn't. It just annoys people. So the first way is simply to do— use a tool like Loom, or LinkedIn also now has this baked into the software where you can deliver a short video to a prospect and make sure that that video is really heavily personalized. So imagine if you received an email or a direct message from somebody with a short personalized video which sounded a little bit like this. Hey Robin, thanks so much for reaching out. It's really great to connect with you. Oh, by the way, that post which you did on LinkedIn about spam, that really resonated. That's something which I struggle with. By the way, we've got a workshop coming up. I just wanted to let you know a little bit about it in case you wanted to attend. So it's all about how you can combat spam and overcome that as an issue. Do me a favor, just put yes as a reply to this if you think that might be interesting to you, or no if you think that that's not really relevant. It just helps me know whether we're a good fit or not, and there's no bad blood here if you want to say no as well. It's just an invitation. So imagine if you got a personalized video which said something along— it's not perfect, but it says something along those sorts of lines. You're far more likely to engage with it. Essentially, so I can't remember who it was, the quote is, a picture paints a thousand words. You know, it's a clichéd statement, it's been around for a very long period of time, but that's absolutely true. And so in my view, a short personalized DM video like that probably replaces 1,000 emails or 1,000 DMs that you would send to a person in terms of like building instant trust and rapport, because they can see your face. If you go and do a little bit of research about them and their business, you could find something quirky to talk about in that video which will resonate with them, because you're making the video about them and how you can add value to them. There are some tools out there. I think one which I saw was called SendSpark, which is like an AI-driven video outreach app. Again, it's designed to send out mass videos to people and DMs to people. And again, I do genuinely believe just because there is a tool out there that does this, it doesn't necessarily mean you should do it. And my problem with that is people are getting far more sophisticated to looking at sort of deepfake technology and deepfake videos. They can see AI videos when they arrive in their inbox. It's just a natural human trait. We can see it and we're like, It doesn't— it jars. It doesn't look quite, you know, well, it's never going to look like the authentic thing, is it? Is it somebody talking to a camera like this? So again, just because there's a tool which allows you to do it, I think again the benefit of sending out 1,000 cold videos via something like SendSpark probably is far outweighed by maybe sending out 5, 10, or 20 like short personalized videos that you've recorded yourself. Now if those videos are only 60 seconds, well, within probably an hour, maybe 2 hours if you allow a little bit of extra time to research the person you're sending that message to, you could probably easily send out 10 to 20 of those videos very quickly and easily. And I bet they would be far better received than the 1,000 emails or spam messages that are being sent instead. And equally, you're not going to get the hate back. If people can at least see you've made an effort, you would hope they'd be respectful and polite and just say, thanks, but no thanks, that's not for me. Or hopefully they'll come back to you and say, yes, actually, this sounds really interesting. So first one, short personalized videos using Loom or using a native tool that's baked into something like LinkedIn in. It's a really, really great way to do it. I like Loom especially for email, personalized videos via email, because when you share it, it creates a little GIF, which is a snapshot of the video which you've taken. So it directly reflects whatever you're sort of, you know, wearing, whether it's your Fearless t-shirt or whatever it is, and it shows it in the email. And then they click onto that image and then they get access to the video. So I like that extra bit of personalization because people can see what they're going to get in the email or message when they receive it. So the second step, 'cause I know that not everybody is the biggest fan of video, and who can blame you, 'cause it can be quite scary and challenging to record lots of videos like that. But if you're a bit of, have a fear of video, then you could just send voice notes. So again, most of these social media apps these days, certainly things like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which are the 3 main platforms which I use, they have a voice note feature baked into the messaging platform, as does Facebook as well. So you can leave short little 60-second bursts of audio and send those to people instead. Again, take the time to research it. Obviously you don't have to worry about your hair or what you're wearing because it's just going to be a voice note. So do make sure that you've kind of cleared your airways, had it— got some water handy so that you can do those 10 to 20 messages fairly quickly. I prefer actually WhatsApp because WhatsApp allows you to do messages slightly longer than a minute if you want to. I can talk until the cows come home, and sometimes I like to go into a little bit more detail, perhaps if somebody approached me with a query about a business problem they've got, I might like to talk through that in like a mini personalized podcast for 2 or 3 minutes, just with a few tips and pointers. And I found that people really connect with that. The other benefit of voice notes is that— I, I would say a bigger benefit even to video— is that you can see that you've got a voice note when it arrives in your inbox, but because there's no picture, you don't know what's in it. So imagine if you've got a piece of lumpy mail that appeared on your doormat you know, a parcel, you would look at that and go, oh, I wonder what's inside. So for me, voice notes are a little bit like that. You don't, you don't really know what you're going to get. Obviously with the video, you can see the person in their studio or whatever doing the video. So what I really recommend is that, you know, voice notes are great because it has that— people click on it, they're curious to know what's in that voice note. And if they know that you're a thought leader or somebody that they follow or are connected with, there's a really high likelihood they're going to click on the play button and at least hear your dulcet tones with your short message that you've prepared for them. So we've got video first if you can, we've got voice notes second. I also think, and this isn't an alternative really, I think the third thing is really something which you would do in tandem with either video or voice notes. But it's really important these days that you've got a really valuable gift which you give to somebody, or even go one step further and create an irrefusable offer that when you send out that message, whether it's written, whether it's a video, whether it's a voice note, that they have like, it's almost a no-brainer that they click on the thing or download it or read it or whatever it might be. So things like books actually are really high value but could be overkill because you're asking quite a lot of somebody when you send them a book. It could take them an hour, 2 hours, 5 hours to read that book, but it— that's a really nice gift. So for me, for example, I give out 3,000 signed copies, physical copies of Take Your Shot every year. One, because I want to put good quality business advice into people's hands. And 2, because I just think it's a nice thing to do. There's nothing better than receiving an actual physical gift through your inbox, or through your letterbox, I should say. If by any chance, actually, if you did want a copy of Take Your Shot, you can jump onto fearless.biz/TYS and you'll be able to request your own signed copy of the book. That said, there are lots of other free gifts which you can give to people, including checklists. You could offer a free 15-minute audit, website audit, SEO audit, branding audit. Doesn't matter what it is that you do. As a coach, you could offer somebody, or let's say you're a hypnotherapist, you could offer some recordings where you're doing some hypnosis tracks, for example. As a coach, there could be a quiz which you could give to somebody to do to help maybe figure out what their level of confidence is. So ideally what you're looking for is something which is interactive, it delivers value, it doesn't take up too much of their time, so that it also helps to ingratiate your brand into their psyche so that it starts to build some trust. If they do the thing, so if you see then that they complete your scorecard or that they've requested your book or whatever it might be, just make a mental note or maybe get access to a CRM platform like Pipedrive, for example, where you put a reminder into your customer journey to actually follow up with that person. Because again, it's happened to me plenty of times and people are leaving money on the table where they take the time to do the video, they take the time to send the free gift, and then they just don't bother following up. And actually people just get busy, right? We're all busy people, so they download the thing, they probably get loads of value from it, and they just don't think to then respond with a message. So just pop a note in your diary or in your CRM to remind you in 2 weeks, a week, a month, however long, to follow up and just say something like, hey, I was just checking, did you get the book? Oh, I'm just checking, did you download the checklist? I'm just checking, how did you find the scorecard? Was it helpful to you? Just something fairly open-ended, non-committal, not asking for much of their time, and you will seriously start to see your response rates go through the roof. Do not get into the habit of using AI, sending out thousands of spammy direct messages and emails. You will get some good numbers from that, but ultimately it will just annoy a heck of a lot of people in the process, which will ultimately damage your brand reputation. It's also very short-term thinking. One of the best quotes which I've heard was from Simon Sinek, who said about the— business is an infinite game. It's not about short-term wins and losses. It's about staying in the game for as long as you possibly can do. And I see spammy cold DMs and emails getting filtered out eventually, or AI, certain regulations coming into place that will stop people from doing this. And so then you'll have to go and find something else to do. Whereas heavily personalized outreach or forms of outreach are probably going to be here to stay. And there'll be newer and better ways to do it, I'm sure. But you're not going to get blocked and kicked off platforms by sending out a handful of heavily personalized videos to people on a regular basis. You only have to do 5 to 10 a day, and over the course of the year, you'll have gathered together somewhere like 500 to 1,000 pieces of direct outreach to people in your audiences, just by spending maybe an hour a day doing this very consistently. Not only that, but obviously the more you do of it, the better you'll get at it as well, and the better response rate you'll start to be able to get from it too. And also, you'll be known for that. People will see that you're somebody who, like, over-delivers on value. So please do take the time with your outreach. You can build some fantastic partnerships and relationships just by slowing the process down a little bit and producing better quality outreach overall.