Visibility of the commercial motive
Don’t pitch right away, but make it clear you are there to sell
There is a recommendation in sales to increase the response rate for prospecting emails: Hide the commercial motivation in the first contact point.
For instance, you offer services to book writers. You reach out to authors, complimenting them about their books and showing that you have read them and you found them insightful. You ask a nice and genuine question to establish a connection and stimulate the desire for an answer. Your call to action is not very clear. You simply state you would like to have a conversation with the author via email. The author feels pleased that you reached out and complimented them on the success of the book. The author most likely replies.
After the author has replied, you build rapport with another email, maybe two, and, at the end, manifest the sales motivation to pitch your services.
Does it increase response rate? Dramatically.
Does it increase closing rate? No. It slashes it down.
Never do anything like this!
The recommendation to wait before pitching is a good one. Cold pitches will always get bad responses. It’s good to warm a lead up when it’s cold. But you should always make the commercial nature of your prospecting clear from the beginning. If you are there to sell, the motive should be manifested right away.
Otherwise, buyers will feel deceived. You contact me for a specific reason and then, only after, I realize you have an ulterior motive that dramatically lowers the trust and raises all the barriers prospects have to defend themselves against sellers.
So, they are more likely to reply but dramatically less likely to convert into clients once they realize the sales motivation. Furthermore, you are not building good credibility and reputation with these tactics, and this could hurt you in the long run.
Some will say establish rapport first, then even if the prospect gets a bit disappointed after you make the sales motivation clear, your relationship is already warm, and you can make up for it.
No. Prospects don’t give the luxury of multiple bridges. Youburn one trust bridge, and it’s over. Warming up leads never meansmisrepresenting the purpose of your attempts to connect.
It is because of these tactics that good sellers have to do twice the work because bad sellers attempt to deceive prospects, so prospects raise a defense system that becomes impenetrable.
We are never there to deceive.
