Last week I wrote a post on LinkedIn. The topic was salespeople making connection requests and immediately pitching the person with whom they have just connected. As someone who believes that outreach is critical and that salespeople have been misled into believing that can succeed with inbound alone, I am not bothered by an attempt to acquire an appointment. It’s the approach that bothers me.
Let’s start with the approach. The text of the message that follows the connection request is always too long, provides a detailed list of offerings (something you know as being Level 1 value, the lowest level of value), and requests that the receiver click a link to schedule a meeting themselves (as if!). There is literally no hint of value in anything in their message. Which brings us to the next problem.
In my second book, The Lost Art of Closing, I included two big ideas that come before the 10 commitments. The first is the idea of controlling the process, which is the idea of helping the client make the commitments they need to make to get the results they want. The second idea is that it is the salesperson’s responsibility to trade enough value to earn the right to the commitment they are seeking.
The “connect and pitch” approach violates the idea of Trading Value. There is no promise how the receiver will gain from a meeting. And for all of you in SAAS, this is the key to why your demos bail out on you; they didn’t believe there is enough value to show up for the meeting.
There are certain rules that are easy to recognize and difficult to break. You can’t really break these rules, rather, you break yourself against them. When you try to make difficult things easy, the shortcuts tend to prevent you from achieving the outcome you want. Worse, when you try to get what you want by taking the lazy approach, your lack of effort ends up costing you the very results you want.
In a Universe that seems to be ruled by causation, it’s a good practice to focus on the best and right cause when you want to create an important effect.
