Why Your Leads Don’t Respond and How to Change It.

Becoming a Better Sales Rep — Post #1

The Status Quo: You Can’t Get Enough People to Respond to Your Sales Messages.

No matter if you are new to sales or a veteran with many years under your belt, you certainly know this feeling: you spend hours on end reaching out to your prospects but they simply do not respond.

You did everything. You took the time to develop and prospect the right buyer personas. Your messages clearly explain how cool your product or service is (and you know how much it’s gonna help them.) You have been polite in your writing. You did everything, but they still don’t reply. Some of them even accepted your LinkedIn invite but ghost you from thereon.

Well, chances are that your messages look something like this:

Hi [Imagine Your Name Here],
I’m with Resonaid, we help sales and business development reps make their outreach more efficient. With our tool, they save valuable time and increase revenue. We work with comapnies like Apple, Bank of America, and many more. Given your role, I wanted to connect.
Best,
Teddy

The Societal Issue OR What You Can’t Change: People Simply Got Sick and Tired of Receiving Sales Messages.

But what’s wrong with that you ask? Well, technically nothing. But, practically this message screams: “I’M A SALES REP, BUY MY PRODUCT!” And be honest, would you respond to this kind of message? And, be excited about talking with me?

Well, obviously not. During the pandemic, I have done research with Mark Roberge, a professor at Harvard Business School, on the impact of COVID on sales. And, interestingly, COVID just accelerated a trend that experts have been predicting for many years: People simply got sick and tired of receiving sales messages.

The growing competition for the attention of potential customers — accelerated by modern technology — has led to most of us receiving multiple sales calls a day and a myriad of LinkedIn messages and cold emails. Our inboxes are stuffed with messages from people or companies wanting to sell us stuff. And, although some techniques are more subtle, if your primary intention is to sell with no interest in the person you’re trying to sell to, your sales outreach simply won’t work.

Quick Digression: We’re Talking About Sales, not Marketing.

Let’s quickly differentiate between sales and marketing. In this blog post, we’re not talking about marketing. Yes, it’s possible to reach people with great content, although content marketing is becoming less effective with everyone doing it these days. But right now, we’re talking about sales. About when companies require or choose to have personal 1-on-1 interactions with people in order to sell their products or services.

The Personal Issue OR What you Can Change: Your Personal Outreach Isn’t Personal.

And just by re-reading the last sentence, you can see the big disconnect that leaves you unsuccessful with your sales outreach.

Did you see it? If you use messages like the one above, you — by design — choose to have personal 1-on-1 interactions but — by execution — your outreach isn’t personal. Messages like this aren’t optimized for sales, they simply convey a marketing message that’s optimized for broad audiences.

The Why: Why Is Being Personal Important?

Just think about it. Why do you like conversations with your friends and loved ones? Who at work do you like talking to the most? Or what made that one sales rep so successful in scheduling a call with you?

Most of the time, it’s pretty simple: The conversations are personal. These people focus on topics that are important to you. And, even more importantly, they focus on you; you as a person.

This ultimately makes you feel appreciated. It’s closely related to a principle from the persuasion sciences, first popularized by Prof. Robert Cialdini: “We like people who like us.” And, we buy from people we like. Without a personal connection, no sale will happen. I guarantee it.

Also, they don’t try to sell you anything in the first place. They are, first, interested in you and, second, they help you with resolving the problems you care about.

The Obstacle: Doing Sales with a Personalized Approach is Hard Work

You might be thinking: “Hey, this is easy. I’ll just be more personal in my outreach.” But, when you actually try doing it you realize how much time it takes you to write a personalized message. You need to deeply study their LinkedIn profiles, look for commonalities, search the web, and all of a sudden you spend 15 minutes per lead. It’s simply not sustainable in a profession that’s driven by hitting numbers.

And, even if you gather all the information quickly, you suddenly realize that now it takes skill to actually condense this information into a succinct but personal message.

The Solution: Resonaid Helps You Write Personalised Messages Fast

Well, nobody ever said sales was easy, right? However, at Resonaid, we want to make it easier. Having worked as sales reps ourselves, we struggled with these issues for many years and we are dedicated to ending this struggle once and for all.

This is why we built a tool that speeds up the process of writing personalized messages. The messages are based on a comparison of both your LinkedIn profile and your leads’ LinkedIn profiles. With identified commonalities, Resonaid suggests messages that will make you connect with your leads on a personal level. It will put you on a path to develop a real relationship that will do two things: it will help you close the deal and your new customer will feel great about it.

Access Resonaid via the Chrome Web Store

You can add Resonaid to your Chrome browser by following this link.

As we just went live this summer, you can currently test Resonaid for free and get large discounts by being an early user.

We deeply appreciate feedback. So, if you can think of anything that we should know, please reach out at hello@persuai.de.

About the Author

Teddy Lange is a co-founder at Resonaid and is responsible for business development and customer experience. Before joining Resonaid, he’s been a Sales Rep and Junior Sales Manager, and co-founded various companies. He’s currently finishing his graduate degree in Public Policy with a focus on communication at Harvard University. Feel free to reach out to him at teddy@resonaid.co.