Salespeople need to start thinking of one buyer at a time. In sales, you often hear phrases like, “It’s a numbers game” or “On to the next one.” At first, they seem innocent enough. They just sound like a positive way to stay persistent so that you don’t become discouraged and give up. But be warned. These sayings originated from a mindset that would be harmful to your business or sales career if you adopted that mentality in today’s business environment. This mindset attempts to compensate for something that is ineffectual, by increasing volume. This delusional and destructive mindset says it’s okay to reach out to people that aren’t the right fit, just as long as you reach out to enough people to get the job done. That might work for the sales manager who’s stuck in 1984, but that doesn’t work for all the people whose time is completely wasted, getting absolutely no value out of the exchange.
The damage isn’t limited to the names on that bad prospect list. Even more damage is being done to the salespeople facing constant rejection by a large number of unqualified people, who would never be able to give a positive response in the first place. I see this mentality every day when we get a terrible cold email written by someone who’s not taken the time to learn what people respond to. Or even worse, I get an email pertaining to something that has nothing to do with us, never mind being able to add value. When these people don’t get any positive responses from sending their garbage out, the only solution they come up with is, “I must need to send to a larger list”.
Yes, more of something can compensate, but you want to maximize first and then multiply so that you’re compounding the positive effects to get exponential results. Mass marketing, blanketing crowds, is just as ineffective as not having a niche. Again, it’s trying to appeal to everyone and never appealing to anyone. The top 1% of marketers has moved to a laser-targeted sniper approach to marketing.
What would happen to your response rates if you reached out to specific people with a message that is so personal, offering a solution that seems so customized to the individual problem that person is experiencing, and using words that seem like they were only meant for them in their unique situation? Your results would go through the roof because those messages are hard to ignore. But the numbers game mentality builds a gigantic list consisting of many different market segments. In order for your copy to speak to all those different segments at once, your language has to be very generic. That general language may allow you to talk to a large number of people at once, but specifics and personalization is what actually creates interest and gets a response. So what good is speaking to everyone at once if what you’re saying isn’t getting anyone’s interest?
At the same time, we must balance being effective with being efficient. Although a manually written ultra-personalized message may be the most effective, it would severely limit us because we only have so much time in a day. Imagine if you didn’t have to compile a list at all. Wouldn’t it be great if you had some amazing piece of software that was able to analyze millions of conversations on social media, read blog posts along with the comments below, and sift through online reviews to find your next perfect prospect? Can you imagine if you had some way of knowing who the one person is that needs your product or service more than anyone else in the world? If you were able to pinpoint with that accuracy, your sales process would be quick and easy. With that kind of precision targeting, you wouldn’t need to reach out to even one other person since you can only have one conversation at a time. And when you’re done helping that person then you would move to the next highest value target.
George Athan said Maybe Artificial Intelligence will get us there someday, but the point is if we could target that well, we would target the best prospects and just pick them off one at a time instead of mass marketing. The closest thing to that technology today is to focus on that one perfect buyer and then create a profile of that person, known as a Client Avatar or Buyer Persona. It allows you to personify your target market and speak to them in a way that will resonate with your best buyers. You can segment your lists and create a persona for each segment. You can speak to a thousand people that fall under that one persona and yet everyone would feel like you are speaking only to them. Who are the people in your niche that you are targeting? What do you know about them? What do they like and dislike? The deeper you go in targeting, the more personalized you can make your message, directly tapping into their fears, frustrations, ambitions, and desires.
When building your personas, start with the business, and then move to the economic buyer. Consider the following factors:
· Sector
· Industry
· Company Size (# of Employees, Revenue, Market share)
· Company Age or Stage in Lifecycle
· Executive Title
· Gender
· Age Range
· Years at Company
· Responsibilities
· Goals/Objectives
· Challenges
· Interests/Passions
· Likes/Dislikes
