…….This Is Personalization???!!?

“You have to personalize your outreach, if you expect to engage your prospects……” This is the mantra of all sorts of gurus and people interested in selling you programs/tools to help personalize. While it’s not wrong, the implementation goes way off base. Here’s a prospecting email I got today:

“Hey David,

Saw on LinkedIn that you attended University of California, Berkeley. Did you ever join the Students for Justice in Palestine’s annual “Shut Down the CIA” event? I heard it’s a powerful tradition advocating for social justice and awareness on campus.

By the way, I noticed you’re the founder of Partners In EXCELLENCE.

Curious if you’re finding it difficult to pay off any credit card or unsecured debt?

[Company Name] financial hardship program specializes in helping Mission Viejo businesses in the early childhood therapy industry consolidate your debt into a no-interest program.

We’ve helped 3,000+ clients lower their rates to zero, cut their MO PMTs by half, and helped them finish their debt within 2-4 years.

Interested in hearing more?

All the best,
Natalie
SDR
[Company Name] | Irvine, CA”

They got my first name correct, though people who know me call me “Dave,” or some other four letter word. They got that I attended UC Berkeley, apparently the list they used incorporated that. But why ask if I attended a certain event that has happened in the past few months? I attended UCB when the lamps on Sather Gate were gas, not electric! And why that event, something that may be very controversial? What do they know about my potential reactions positive/negative to that event? A safer bet might have been, “How’d you like the big game last year?” (We beat Stanford 27-15! Go Bears!)

Then they dig themselves deeper……

They got the company name right, extra credit points for the all caps on EXCELLENCE. Most people don’t get that, apparently their list featured this. Now, they are talking about the company’s financial hardships….. and their experience in helping businesses like mine in the early childhood therapy business???

Wait, maybe they have an insight I overlooked! Working with sales people is often like early childhood therapy…… Except children seem to be more easily coached. We have no financial debt, actually very profitable, but maybe I could learn about how to apply early childhood therapy to sellers…..

There is nothing right in this email, and sadly it is no better or worse than 90% of the emails I get.

Just because you know someone’s name, where they went to school, the name of their company, where they are located, their title, whatever doesn’t mean you have personalized anything. It just means you have bought a lot of irrelevant data enabling you to sound even more dumb and irrelevant.

Personalization is not about knowing these things. It’s about identifying something the target individual might currently be interested in. Is there something happening in their company that might impact their role? Is there something happening in their markets that might impact their work/success? Is there something we see their competitors doing that might have an impact on what they do?

Personalization is not about knowing names, universities, hobbies, or anything else. It’s doing the homework to identify an issue that might be important to them, in their current role, right now! We don’t buy lists that provide this, we have to do the work ourselves. And in doing that homework, we might get insights that might enable us to engage them in impactful ways.

Personalization might be an interesting point of view on something the person shared in social media. It’s not, “I saw you liked this post,” rather, “You expressed an interesting point of view, here is my take on the issue….”

Personalization is engaging the individual, in a manner that’s consistent with their communication style.

You can’t personalize if you don’t take the time to know what the person might be most concerned about today!