It’s year end, people are reaching out, through all channels, with connection requests, meeting requests to sell me something, everything you can imagine. And, as you might expect, everyone has “personalized” their outreach. Somehow, though it should be no surprise, they are remarkably impersonal.
I’ve gotten used to ignoring those that are addressed to D.A. Brock, or refer to my company as Excellence or Excellenc.com. They clearly have no idea about me or the company, they have just harvested a list.
There are those that say, “We’re in the same LinkedIn Group….” I spend no time in LinkedIn groups and most have 10’s of thousands of members. Or, “I see you went to UCLA…..” Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any closer to that outreach. Or it means you saw my profile but didn’t take the time to think about who I am, what I might be interested in.
Or there are those saying, “I saw your comment on this post……” I’m sure hundreds of others have seen my comment, but a personalized outreach might be, “Dave, I saw your comment, I’m confused, what do you mean by…..” Or, “I read your post, I think it was good, but you might consider this….”
Personalization is not mentioning an arbitrary data point available to anyone, it’s about trying to connect with a person in some more meaningful way. It doesn’t have to be deep, but it should be meaningful to the person. It should show you’ve taken a moment to think about what/why I might be interested in engaging. You’ve seen something I have said or presented and, as a result, have a reaction or question. You saw that I attended an event and you have a thought about something that may have happened at the event. You see something in my background and you want to relate to it in a specific way.
Many will read this, thinking, “Dave, I don’t have the time to do this, after all, I have to send 1000 emails today….” My thought is, “Would you have to send 1000 emails if you tried to connect in a meaningful way? Could you send 100 and get a higher response because you’ve done your homework?”
Personalization is about connecting, in some way, with another person. And that means you care, perhaps in a small way, about how you engage that person.
Sadly, it seems too many really don’t care about the person, about what might be important to them, about why they might want to engage. And if you don’t care, it’s probably certain the person you are attempting to reach is not likely to care.
Leave a Reply