Who Guides These People?
You know the story. Sign up for an enticing freebie report online. Read report. Consider it inconsequential. Receive pleas for dialogue from reps via email for next millennia.
Normally these get spam-filtered out, but here’s the main body from a dastardly one that sneaked through.
“I hope these emails are not getting too annoying, but I’ve got to make my mortgage payment somehowJ Let me know at any time if you would like me to stop contacting you. If you are still in the market for [insert amazing service of choice], we really should talk. If you are not in the market, than we should still talk to discuss replacing your current solution when the contract is up (assuming we are better of course). Contact me at any time to discuss your situation, or to tell me to go jump off a cliff.”
I must stress first, that I am not against sending emails that ask for a conversation. They are in fact pretty vital. Yet there are several things wrong with this guy’s approach here.
The very first sentence is a stinker. And it’s nigh on impossible to conjure a recovery after, no matter how Shakespearian you may be. Am I annoying? You betcha. You need to pay bills? Who doesn’t. But wait, you’ve a sense of humour? I’ve work to do. Delete.
Better still, jump off a cliff. There’s also an assumption that’s overly enthusiastic. I’m not in the market for the wares dangling before me, no matter how tantalising.
Here’s a rep trying to shake a tree. Probably with little help. He deserves a pointer or two. This paragraph falls down because it bears no relation to ‘me’. And as I’m the ‘customer’, that’s a fairly fatal flaw. Given what I know about the product being flogged (crm would you believe) it can be simply re-fashioned to incorporate the following elements for starters:
- Reminder that I’m on the list because people regularly change, and when they prepare to, we’ll be here to help out
- A problem we typically resolve, pain that we remove, value we add, includes….
- Re-contact can be to suit your buying cycle if you wanna pass on when that runs
It’s not hard to create five sentences that feature these. And I bet it generates a better response than the text above, both in terms of rate and crucially, quality of feedback.
And a final lament. The person that sent this described themselves as an Account Executive. That sounds like someone starting out, all full of beans. Whilst his endeavour is to be lauded, why oh why the world over do sales people have to resort to this? Plain and simple, this is a job someone in sales support, or heaven forbid marketing, should be doing. Do you really want me to get on my high horse about this…?