Two Awful Prospecting Messages

I receive a lot of prospecting messages each week. Most arrive via social media and email, and fewer come via postal delivery or the telephone.

Two came in last week - one for my business and one for my home. One came through regular mail and the other by email. They were so bad they took the top spot for this week’s article. You’ll see what they wrote and my snarky comments immediately after.

But, the main purpose of this is to make sure none of your prospecting messages look anything like these two.

First, the business email:

Subject: Phone invite on Thursday at 1:00 PM - Bob? (A subject line should grab your attention, show some kind of connection with you, and make you want to read more. This does none of that. Normally, emails like are immediately deleted without opening, based purely on the subject line and sender’s name. The only reason I opened it was for this article. I had no idea who the person was that sent it.)

Hi Bob,

Is it okay to send you a Zoom meeting invite on Thursday at 1:00 PM to discuss our services? (So, their strategy was to lead with a Zoom meeting invite, probably because every executive I know is dying to fill their day with more Zoom calls, especially with strangers, to hear about their business. Even funnier is how the most important words in their mind, the ones in bold font, were the date and time. Wow. Wait, it gets better.)

Basically, it's a business-to-business comprehensive appointment setting services combining Telemarketing, LinkedIn and Email Marketing. (I wonder if they realize that based on the number of messages I receive each week for appointment setting services, there must be hundreds of companies who do this. Maybe mention one thing you do better and different?)

If this makes sense to you? What's the best number to reach you? (I’m not sure if I was most impressed by the sentence fragment or the audacity to ask for my phone number. Shocked they didn’t ask for my social security number.)

You may also book an appointment here: BOOK HERE! (They provided a handy link to their online calendar. Oh, goody, I have another option to waste my time. I’m going way out on a limb here, but I’m getting the sense there are a lot of open spots on that calendar.)

Looking forward to your response. (Be careful what you ask for because my response is to make fun of this. Just imagine how bad their actual service must be. It’s for appointment setting! Where you need crisp, compelling messages!)

All the best,

His name (which I won’t share. And no, he’s not a proud graduate of one of my prospecting classes. If he was I’d have to refund his money times two.)

You’d think this email was a joke since there isn’t one thing in here done right. There’s no connection to me, nothing customized, no problem or need, no potential benefit. No qualification either, like who would be a good fit for them. And, what if this person was setting up appointments for someone else in their company who actually leads the Zoom call? What a waste of everyone’s time.

Some suggestions

I’m not going to rewrite this whole email, just the subject line. The subject line and the first line of the email are the most important in any cold outreach. They’ll never read your message unless they open it.

Better subject lines: “Do you wish you had more appointments?” “Prospecting is such a chore.” “Lead generation is the worst part of selling, right?” “A lead is not a lead unless it’s qualified.”

I’d probably open one of these emails.

Second, the physical letter, from a roofing company:

Dear Homeowner, (How do they know if I’m the homeowner? Lots of people rent, especially seasonally in Florida where I live. And if they actually looked up public records and saw that I was the homeowner, why not lead with my name?)

We were recently in your area because a neighbor needed professional attention for their roof. (Could anything be more vague? A neighbor? Professional attention? Because if a neighbor needed it I must. You know, another neighbor just needed some electrical work done, I should probably do that too.Generalities don’t lead to appointments. Specificity does.)

Whether your roof requires routine maintenance…” (They then filled the letter with all their features. Luckily it was single spaced making it almost unreadable. Which is what I did. I never made it through the whole thing.)

Hey, roofing company, why not do this instead:

Dear Bob,

Here are 3 things we’ve seen in the last 3 months on roofs like yours in Hammock Preserve: (Personalize it by mentioning my name, my community and make me curious. This fits because most of the gated communities near me have one roof style only.)

That’s going to make me read on. Then list the 3 problem areas, maybe symptoms of the problem area (if it’s something I could see) and offer a free inspection.

Or, they could headline the letter with, “Every roof repair should be guaranteed”.

In Summary: With easy access to the kind of information we have today, there’s no reason to not personalize prospecting messages. You’ll get a better response rate sending out 5 custom messages than 500 generic ones like these two companies did.

Have a great week!

Bob

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, there are four ways I can help you, either as an individual or as a team:

(1.) Comprehensive courses with coaching (like All-Win Negotiating and Developing & Delivering Great Presentations)

(2.) Mini-courses (where we focus in depth on one key success topic)

(3.) What to Do Next (strategies and counterstrategies for every sales situation and obstacle)

(4.) One-on-One coaching (customized to achieving your specific outcome).

Just email me [email protected] if you’d like to talk about what you want to do. It’s a no-cost consult.