Blog

What will make them stop?

July 5th, 2022 by Kenneth Abrahams

If they came to life, they would be Zombies, attacking in wave after wave. You can run but you can’t hide. They are relentless, filled with jargon that most people neither understand nor care about. After a while you feel like it might be easier to just stop fighting and succumb to the pressure. No, they aren’t Zombies, they are emails from SEO marketers and web designers. They come from far and wide, domestic, and international, some better worded than others. Many are addressed Hey, or Dear funent.com owner. Often, they praise us for our website content but chide us for missing the boat on being found by Google and other search engines. They litter my mailbox and I’m sure many of yours as well.

Over time, I have worked with several marketers, sales experts, and business coaches. In the interest of public service, I would like to pass on some of my knowledge to these folks to hopefully improve their sales techniques. Let’s start with the basics:

1. You are billing yourself as a tech firm, promising to get me on the front page of Google for “a very reasonable price.” Perhaps a good start would be to figure out how to do a simple mail merge or do better research. My name Ken, it is right in my email address, [email protected]. Getting an email addressed to “Hey” or “Hey Business Owner” or even “Dear Funent.com” instills me with no confidence that you have the slightest clue about what you are doing.
2. Lose the word love. So many of these pitches talk about how they would love to work with me. It is a word that many people who talk about sales and marketing strongly advise you to stay away from. It can come off as desperate sounding or too familiar. You can replace it with phrases like “we would welcome the opportunity to earn your business,” or “we appreciate you considering us.”
3. Don't use jargon and the tech mumbo jumbo. I neither need to know or have any understanding of all the languages and the systems you are well versed or proficient in. It is all white noise to me. I understand that you are probably smart and have spent time and hours learning all these languages and all this code, but part of what I would be looking for you to do is explain the process in simple terms that I, and others on my team, can understand.
4. Make sure that the problem you are trying to fix is important to me or whoever you are soliciting. New and more business is always great, but with the current staffing issues that we, and others, are facing, we are more selective about any new clients and events we take on. For years, we have worked with clients near and far, but now we are concentrating on schools, companies and events that are more local. To offer me a position on the coveted first page of the great and mighty Google, at this point in time, is not something that is appealing. Send us an email that says “Hey are you having trouble finding and hiring people to fill a variety of positions within your company? Look no further, we can help and have a 100% satisfaction guarantee or double your money back.” Sign me up, you are the person that I want to talk to.
5. If you are sending things out, make sure to check and see if the person responded before you send the “Did you see my last email because I never got a response?” email. Often, I go back through my sent folder and find that I had responded, not once but often 2 and 3 times, and I forward all of those back to the sender. Rarely, do I get a response apologizing for their oversight. Now, I just block them from being able to send me future emails.
6. Proofread the solicitation before it is sent. It is amazing how many offers/sales pitches arrive in my Inbox with misspellings, typos, and grammatical mistakes. Take a quick break and have someone proofread it before you hit send.

Yes, the beginning of this post was way over the top and more than a bit tongue in cheek, but the sentiment is real. Getting your email noticed in a clutter filled sea of emails isn’t easy. Trust me, we get it. Like so many folks out there, we are sending more mass communications to our clients than ever before. In our emails we try and address concerns that have been expressed to us by other clients. We talk about our products in general and don’t talk about the “cutting edge technology” we employ. In short, we hope that our communication, at best provides some value to our clients, and at worst isn’t too annoying.

Anybody that has done sales for a long period of time will tell you it is not easy. How do you get your foot in the door of a new client? What is the right button to press? What can I say in an email or Constant Contact piece that will resonate with a buyer? How many times should I reach out before simply adding them to my own do not contact list? Questions on this topic are endless, answers are far less plentiful. Many sales consultants believe that people buy for three main reasons; need, price, and relationship. Need is simple, you have a product or a service that they need, and you happened to hit them on the right day. Price is not as simple as it sounds. Yes, if you are comparing the exact same items, it is very easy, but with services and some products it is more complicated. Is that service provider you are hiring with the lowest bid going to provide what you really need? Is the most expensive offer always the highest quality? Some of the emails that I get address the first two items. They promise to meet or beat any competitors price and they have identified issues of concern on our website, but they can’t establish a relationship or trust. There are times when I want to lash out at these emails and ask why I would turn my website over to a complete stranger, but I know they are just trying to survive or grow.

As a team we thrive on relationships to drive our sales. We genuinely want to get to know our clients so that we can best help them. Over time, we become sounding boards to help the people that we work with flesh out ideas to create their events. For the folks that have gotten to know us very well, they believe we are a great resource for them and if we don’t have what they are looking for, we might know somebody that does. For many in our organization, a successful even and a happy client are more satisfying than the money received. Perhaps, these individuals and organizations that are filling my inbox would have more success, along with more satisfaction, if they did more research and sent less poorly written, blind emails. What will make them stop? Probably nothing.

About the author

Ken Abrahams is a father of two adult boys, one who has followed in his mother’s footsteps as a fundraiser and the other who is doing sales. When the family gets together there are always interesting discussions. He is also father to Ricky and Ralph two Coon Hound mixes that we rescued during the pandemic.

To find out more about the company go to our website www.funent.com you can also go to this link to sign up for our newsletter which comes out about 6 times a year https://funent.com/subscribe-to-the-funny-pages/.  Our newsletter will tell you more about the company and the products and services we offer as well as some games, things to do and the occasional cooking tip.