“Did You Get My Last Email…….”

Our inboxes, social feeds, text messages, voicemail (does anyone use it anymore), are filled with outreaches. If your experience is anything like mine, 99.9% are a pure waste. Poorly targeted, personalized in the most impersonal manner, AI authored. The volume grows. Fortunately I’ve trained my spam filters to take out a lot, but inevitably a few sneak through.

But this post isn’t whining about those initial emails that we get. There are also a very small number of very good and relevant outreaches that suffer from the same problem. It’s the “Did you get my last email” problem.

We know that multi-touches are required to get customer attention. Today, I think the data shows 17 are required. Hmmmm….

We develop our outreach sequences and cadences to execute our multi-touch strategies. We leverage multiple channels–email, social, text, voice. We have our cadences, following up on our initial outreach. Perhaps sending a follow up message a few days later, a week later. We execute those rigorously.

And 90% of these sequences follow exactly the same formula, “Dave, did you get my last email…..” That progresses to, “Dave, I’ve emailed you on this issue 5 times, can we arrange some time to talk…..?” Then we get “Dave, this is your last chance, I won’t bother you anymore, but did you get that email 10 weeks ago….” And even though it was the “last chance,” inevitably there is another, “Dave, can I entice you by sending you a Yeti cup, hoodie, ……” Right now, someone has progressed through offers for a bottle of Scotch, Bourbon, Whiskey…..” Maybe if he offers a good Tequila I might respond.

When I get these “Did you get my last email…” outreaches, the same thing always goes through my mind. “If your first email wasn’t interesting to me, why is a follow up about the same thing likely to provoke a response?”

What if we started building a story in our follow-up sequences?

What if we started thinking, “If our prospect isn’t interested in this issue, what’s the next issue we might introduce into the discussion?” Long time readers will know my passion for Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham.” In the last half of the book, Sam changes his prospecting message. He starts with, “Would you like them in a plane…” If that doesn’t generate a response, Sam, says, “Would you like them in a train….” And then he progresses to “Would you like them in a boat…” Eventually, he captures his prospect’s interest, and they discover they like Green Eggs And Ham. Sam explored many dimensions of why someone might want to accept his offer. He didn’t keep repeating, “Would you like them in a plane…?”

We need to be thinking of our sequences in a similar manner.

But then we have a problem doing that. Most of our outreaches focus on our products. “We help generate new leads, can we talk to you about how we generate more leads?” If our focus is pitching our products, then it’s difficult to change our story. After all, that’s all we sell.

The way we can generate a story and a sequence of “Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, …” is by focusing on the customer and the underlying problems, challenges, opportunities they face. “Are you looking to grow at a faster rate than you currently are…” “Do you have pipeline health problems….” “Are you looking to expand into new markets or regions….” “Are you looking to expand your penetration of your key accounts….” “Are you looking to cross sell new products…” Any of these could lead to a discussion of generating more leads.

If we are going to connect with our prospects, we have to find what they are interested in talking about. We don’t do that by continuing to say the same thing.

Afterword: Long time followers know my obsession with the works of Theodor Geisel/Dr. Seuss. I’ve been collecting his drawings for a number of years, currently have about a dozen pieces. Most are weighted to Green Eggs and Ham. The picture accompanying this post is one of my favorite Diptych’s.