Every time I’m pitching someone, I always try to make fun of my life in some way. In fact, I intentionally seek out opportunities to do this.
A lot of business development and sales is about likability. Given two equal products, buyers will purchase from the seller they like more. Hence, by making myself more likable, I increase my odds of succeeding.
There are many components to likability; some which we can control, others that we can’t (like being 6’4, tan, and really, really ridiculously good-looking – crap). One aspect of likability we can control is how relatable we are.
How Being Relatable Enhances Likability
People like people that they can identify with. There’s an inherent sense of understanding injected into an interaction when you …
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One of the biggest fallacies I see amongst professionals who write cold emails is their failure to follow up. Knowing how to write an effective follow up email effectively is probably the easiest way to increase your response rate if you aren’t already doing it.
Make It Easy
The optimal way to follow up to an unanswered email is by replying to the first one you sent. This practice allows you to:
Keep the followup short
Make the initial context easy for the reader to find
Emphasize that they have not responded to you
By initially following up on a separate thread, you’re putting an onus on the reader. Often they didn’t read or forgot the initial email. As a result, when they receive …
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I’ve written hundreds of cold emails over the past year and come to a few conclusions about how to elicit a positive response. I’ve also received a few myself and consistently see people use strategies that just haven’t worked for me. Here’s my two cents on how to cold email prospects effectively.
Do:
Keep it 4 sentences or less (ideally 3).
When you send someone you don’t know a novel to read, you’re making them work. Busy people have too much on their plate to dedicate time to a speculative narrative – so they don’t read them diligently (this may not apply if your email domain rhymes with moogle or hicrosoft).
Most long, cold emails I receive are from JV sales people that rarely …
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Many people miss opportunities because they don’t make things easy when they ask for something.
The best way to increase the number of positive responses you receive when you ask for anything, is to make it as easy as possible for the other person to follow through. The more difficult fulfilling a request appears, the less likely they are to do it.
I want to take this opportunity to highlight a few examples of “making things easy” done right so people know what this looks like.
Hiring
This is an email from my buddy David Fraga. Instead of making me hoof it over to the Shutterstock site to fetch all this information to forward along, he linked to it throughout the ask email. He …
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Business Development professionals live and die by their network. Thus, many of us end up living and dieing by our LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s greatest value is that it provides transparency to the personal networks of my immediate network in the form of 2nd degree connection. This information is often the gateway to the deals, partnerships, and sales we strive for on a continuous basis. Consequently, it’s in all business development practitioners best interest to expand their *true LinkedIn network. After all, the difference between the deal of a lifetime and no-deal could be just one warm introduction. But in order to even identify these opportunities there must be transparency.
A best practice to make sure you’re effectively engaging in this is to schedule …
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Meetings can be a colossal waste of time especially in a field that harbors speculative conversations like Business Development.
When appropriate, one practice I use to maximize meeting efficiency is to email the meeting attendee(s) an agenda 2-3 hours prior to the meeting. These emails typically contain the meeting objective, an outline of what will be discussed, and any questions that I know that I’ll be asking. An example might look like this:
Subject: Meeting Agenda For Today’s Call
Hi Scott,
I just wanted to send you an agenda prior to our 2pm call so that your team has an idea of what to expect.
The goal of this call is to see whether your team is ready to implement our solution within the next …
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People you don’t know are always more likely to respond to your emails when you’ve been referred. It signals you’ve been vetted.
Unfortunately, we don’t always have someone willing to introduce or refer us to the person we’re trying to reach. One way to combat this is by creating a referral. The methodology is pretty simple and can be applied even before you’ve identified the decision maker:
Step 1. Call Above Someone in the Organization
By calling above, I mean call someone who holds a higher, related position within the corporate hierarchy. I.E. If I’m trying to reach the VP of marketing, try calling the Chief Marketing Officer’s office.
When you reach this person, simply ask them who is responsible …
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In the business development world, the world silence usually has a negative connotation, but when you’re pitching it can be a good thing.
People are naturally uncomfortable with silence during a phone conversation with a new acquaintance. When they encounter it, they don’t know what to do…so they just start talking.
Often there are valuable pieces of information that prospects hold close to their chest. An example might be how interested they are in buying your product or service. Just like on a car lot, they might not want to seem too interested to maintain bargaining leverage. Other times there’s questions that are just awkward to ask directly.
You can use the silence disposition to your advantage in these type of scenarios. Purposefully …
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