Many of you know that we often get asked, “When you are training OOH salespeople, if you boiled it down in the simplest of terms, what are you teaching them?” That’s easy…we are teaching to not look, act or sound like every other salesperson. If you want to be treated differently you must act differently.
Why is that so important? Let’s talk about sending sales prospecting emails as an example. Based on your own inbox, you may be aware that since the pandemic sales emails are up more than 150%. (Projected to be 362 billion in 2024). And you just thought you got a lot of emails before the pandemic! However, at the same time sales email volume is up, the responses are down 33%!
Why do you suppose such a low rate of responses? Think of all of the messages you get that try to sound personalized but really aren’t. For instance: “It looks like we have some mutual connections, I’d love to learn more about your business.” This may have worked ten years ago, but today, it doesn’t belong in anyone’s repertoire. It’s no longer enough to get the attention of a prospect. The same goes for using the person’s first name “Emily, I’ve been hearing buzz about your company.” Or “Bill, it seems like you’re doing some great work at ABC Roofing.” We don’t want to make the mistake of imagining that any of that is personalized, because today, it isn’t. Using the person’s name or the organization’s name isn’t personalizing anything. Computers do that now, and they do it millions and millions of times a day. Buyers today see right through it. You see right through it when you get messages like that. If it looks like a sales message and smells like a sales message, guess what? We delete it. You are NOT acting differently.
These Don’t Work:
- “Look like we have some mutual connections. I’d love to learn more about your business.
- “Emily, I’ve been hearing buzz about your company, would love to connect.”
- “I noticed your experience as an insurance professional and decided to connect. Our networks and skills could be mutually beneficial.”
- “Seems likes you’re doing some great work at Best HVAC Services. How are you handling this wild market?”
So, what do we do instead?
The simple answer is: We work hard on the front end before we ever reach out to someone. We create a hyper-personalized message. That may not be what all of us are used to doing, but it’s what we need to do if we want to beat our OOH and other media competitors. Before we ever reach out, we want to find some things that we can talk about that will help us to make this case to each one of our prospects: Of all the people in the world, you are the only person on the planet who could have received this particular message. If we don’t make that case, then we don’t even make it onto the radar screen. I realize that’s a paradigm shift. What used to work just doesn’t anymore. I can’t keep doing what I always did and expect I am going to get different results. I realize it takes some effort on our side. But that’s the reality. And I promise you it takes less time and effort than you may think.
Need help with sales skills or coaching to take your out of home company to the next level. Learn more about OOH Sales Mastery at oohmastery.com or Contact Dan Nausley at dan.nausley@sandler.com, 423.702.5579.
Lisa & Dan Nausley of Sandler Chattanooga have developed the OOH Sales Mastery Program after more than a decade of training/coaching scores of OOH Operators across the country in sales, leadership, and executive coaching.
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