Salespeople: Here’s Why Prospects Ignore Your Outreach
David Priemer, Founder of Cerebral Selling
In the age of distraction, many sales leaders look for every opportunity to promote relentless focus and prioritization. And although many fully support their own outreach programs, few are receptive to outreach from others. For example, companies may believe their own business development representatives have great value, but then never engage with other people’s BDRs that are attempting to prospect them. If the very leaders who employ these tactics continue to build immunity to them, what hope do we have? Here are three fundamental issues I consistently see with the current state of prospecting outreach.
You don’t have my attention.
When I wake up in the morning and turn on my phone I have about 20 new emails to read since the time I went to sleep. Buyers are busier than ever and have scarcely little discretionary mental bandwidth. With all due respect to your valiant prospecting efforts or how amazing your solution is, I have a million others things to focus on. You don’t have my attention, and without first earning my attention, your message will fall on deaf ears.
You sound the same as everyone else.
I get about five BDR prospecting outreaches a day. Most look something like this:
Hi David,
I wanted to reach out because my company [insert vendor name] helps organizations like [insert your company name] [insert top 10 list of pain/value propositions every vendor claims — e.g., increase productivity, reduce sales cycle time, boost engagement, manage leads, improve conversion, connect with key prospects, etc.]
Our solutions have helped customers like [insert list of generic famous companies designed to impress me] see an improvement of [insert ROI stat].
Do you have 15 minutes to speak this week? Looking forward to hearing from you!
Now I know many of you reading this will say your outreach is different — that you pen a snappy/personal opening, use a unique format, include a screenshot of your app and customer quotes. News flash: You sound the same.
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