Offering value—without having earned the chance to provide it—is failing most sellers. Beware. 

Do you honestly believe customers are waiting for your value to land in their inbox? Consider abandoning this belief.

Mr. Keenan makes a compelling argument for what many believe to be the number one, Golden cold email best practice.

Your email, he says, must offer value, “Because you're asking for something.” A meeting.

“I'm regularly bombarded with horrific emails, almost always asking for 15 or 30 minutes of my time. These emails offer nothing of value and just clutter my inbox. I delete them as fast as I can,” says Mr. Keenan.

“Why should someone open your email or give you 15 minutes of their time if there is no value in it for them? They shouldn't and they won't.”

But what if your cold email didn’t strive to prove value—at all? What if striving to deliver value is the problem?

What if 95% of what you read online is horse hockey! "Fake news?" This is "fake 'best' practices." 

Increasingly, clients open emails based on curiosity about what’s inside the email—not anticipation of value they’ll receive.

Cold sales outreach is not marketing. It's different. There is no expectation of value. In fact, there's an increasing annoyance to being bombarded with what sellers think is valuable. (but is often not!)

Bottom line: "Give value" or "make deposits first" has the wrong goal in mind. Earning a meeting.

Instead, you need to earn a conversation and allow a meeting to be chosen by the customer. Or not.

Compelling a customer to meet—by smothering them with value and without their having established a need to—is an outdated, ineffective practice.

Do this instead

Instead, learn a method to help the customer feel a need to start developing the desire to meet.

Want more meetings with decision-makers? Stop requesting them. I dare you. Instead, start provoking discussions, piquing curiosity.

Stop trying to give-give-give, add value and clearly presenting offers. Start trying to provoke. Be un-clear. And super short.

“The offer is what you are offering or giving the reader. Yes! I said giving. If you're not offering the reader anything, why should they open it, read it, respond or even agree to what you're asking for?” asks Mr. Keenan.

Because you've sent a message provoking their curiosity.

Not because you offered clear, compelling value.

This is sales, not marketing. STOP writing like a marketer. Start earning more response. Update your belief system.

Stand out & provoke curiosity 

Effective email and voicemail outreach messages contain:

• research or observation about the prospect (the relevancy piece)
• fewer than 5 sentences (short, able to be read on a smart device & responded to in less than 30 seconds)
• a provocative, non-biased question in place of a call to action (yes, calls to action are also poisonous)

Last week in the Academy we were working with Susan, a seasoned Manpower rep (selling staffing solutions). She has 35 years of experience. But lately, she isn't getting enough conversations started with F500 clients. We've transformed her communication technique. 

Here's one of the provocations we developed.

James,
Are you open to examining your internal threat intelligence tools? Because I suspect you are being prevented from seeing individual processes leading to an alarm.

What would cause you to examine your existing set of tools, James?

My best,

Alex

Again, we see Alex asking a facilitative question... an inward directed, non-biased question.

It's not biased to an answer Alex seeks... so he can sell to James.

Not a template!