As someone with ‘manager’ in my title, I get a good amount of prospecting emails from various software platforms and professional services. Since I’m on training side of the house, I can’t help but critique certain emails I get; I almost always respond with little recommendations and tidbits to help improve their outreach and wish them luck hitting their goals, even if I’m not interested.
Occasionally, though, either myself or a member of my team gets a cold email from a competitor trying to pitch their services to us. This one hit our Marketing Manager’s inbox last week, for example:
Very intriguing! A lot of value props packaged up to (seemingly) help our sales floor…. Until I read, “…They simply rent remote sales reps from us per hour”. Hmmmm. I continued reading:
*record scratch* Appointment setting? Cold calling? Outbound and inbound activities? While our models and what we offer are different, this sounds slightly familiar:
This is taken directly from our ‘What We Do’ tab on our website which, in my (un)biased opinion, is pretty easy to navigate and find. As you can see, some may classify that company as a low-key competitor to Reveneer.
Believe me, I get it; these things happen from time to time. Sometimes it’s an honest mistake but, in this case at least, it could have been avoided with one crucial step in this rep’s prospecting efforts:
Doing Your Homework
Reaching out to a company and have found the perfect title to engage with? Awesome!
Now, take the next few minutes to take a look at that company’s website. Since you’re hoping to spend between two and five minutes on the phone with your prospect, you want to at least show you’ve put the effort into seeing what they do and have some grasp of how you can help. We wrote a blog a little while ago on how important using relevance is when reaching out to your prospects. Taking a quick look at a company website or your prospect’s LinkedIn profile is a great way to gather some quick background info of who you’re calling. What it also does, however, is help you avoid calling (or emailing) your competitors. Not only is it a bad look for you internally, but it reflects poorly on your organization in general.
If you don’t have the attention to detail to simply jump on their website to learn more about them, than how much attention to detail is your product or service going to lack as well? This is what your prospect is thinking!!
We’ve had some great examples of prospecting emails over the years and the #1 reason why they’re so good is because someone actually took the time to look into our company before they reached out. Doing your homework, while a bit time consuming sometimes, makes all the difference when your prospect picks up that phone or opens that email.
