Category: leadership

Sales emails

FabrizioLeave a comment

Sales emails are bad more often than they are not. Really bad. I remember a sales rep reaching out to me on LinkedIn while I was unemployed, telling me how great I was, how much he appreciated my work and how the tool he was selling could have improved the performance of my company.

Yet sometimes, sales emails are kind of ok. I got one today that went something like this.

Fabrizio: 
 
I am Vice President of Sales at *Whatever Company* handling business development for the company and their entire portfolio of assets.  I was hoping you would have some time to take a call or a meeting.  We have worked with many growth companies over the years building effective campaigns that deliver tremendous results.  I am confident we can do the same for *your Company*. 
 
*Whatever Company* is one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies with more than xxx displays reaching more than half a billion people in more than xx countries on x continents each month.  In the U.S., *Whatever Company* operates in xx of the top xx U.S. markets and is the leading outdoor advertising company with the fastest-growing digital outdoor network now surpassing xxx displays. 
  
*Whatever Company* has successfully developed and maintained the most comprehensive network of major airports in North America and has over xxx airports worldwide.  We market an effective combination of both international hub airports and targeted local O&D airports which creates opportunities for potential national or regional campaigns of all size. 
 
Would you happen to have some time to do a conference call or have a meeting in the next couple of weeks?  
 
Thanks in advance!

No grammar mistakes, the name of my company is correct, there are a couple of nice personalisations here and there, and all in all the text explains what they have to offer.

And still, they will never get an answer.

It is very easy to tell a lot about what you do, your coverage, your numbers, how you’ve helped this and that. But suppose you are in a room with somebody who only talks about themselves. Is that pleasant? Are you likely to meet them again? Would you do business with them? Of course not. Nonetheless we keep thinking that telling our story will simply awe everybody.

Few ways to avoid this trap.

Connect with me on a personal level. Tell me how much you appreciated the latest story I shared on LinkedIn, or how you see from my recent posts that our company is hiring and growing even further, or how you were impressed to find that we made it to the *Whatever Analyst* report also last year.

Mention ONE business challenge that I have, and how you can fix it. You say you have worked with many growth companies, so tell me about the common pains, the difficulties in affirming your brand when every other competitor has ten times your marketing budget, the impact of your work on metrics a growth company cares about.

Show me that you can deliver. You must have a customer success story, some narrative I can relate to more directly, a difference you’ve made for a company our size and in our stage. Tell me how it did work out, and how happy they were after they have made the investment.

It is a lot less easier, and perhaps not as scalable as the traditional approach. And you’ll find your work has greater purpose, is more exciting, and can actually change people and their businesses.

Being wrong

Fabrizio1 Comment

There is a beautiful Ted Talk by Kathryn Schultz about being wrong.

The most interesting part starts at 3:54. It is about what being wrong feels like. There is first a significant distinction between “being wrong” and “realising to be wrong”. Then Kathryn Schultz ends the argument by saying that, while after the realisation we might feel “embarassed”, “dreadful”, and completely down, in the very moment we are wrong, the feeling is very much different.

It does feel like something to be wrong; it feels like being right.

Kathryn Schultz

We are all confident we are right about many different aspects of life, and the funny thing is the more we are, the more we try to convince others of our view. Others that, from their perspective, are absolutely right about everything.

It is an endless fight, one with no winners. To paraphrase Dale Carnagie, there is only one possible outcome to any argument. If you lose it, you lose it. If you win it, you lose it.

Nobody will ever look at you as a saviour, the one who came enlighten their path that was previously dark and full of terror. Approaching life and business from an oppositional perspective (right vs. wrong) is preparing us for a lonely and frankly boring journey.

Leaders know they don’t know, and know that the little they know today might be completely wrong by tomorrow. Finding new ways, exploring new stories, embracing the unknown, and accompanying people along, is the work of leaders.

Your language is your World

Fabrizio1 Comment

Sometimes organisations, particularly organisations that have a heavily technical component, develop their own internal language. It is a great way to build identity and even culture, and it is important that new members of the organisation get instructed on said specific language.

Nonetheless, there are two risks.

The first one has to do with belonging. As the company grows, more and more people will feel as outsiders, as they did not contribute to the vocabulary and the phrase book that is being used day after day.

The second one has to do with opportunity. The more specific and internally focused the language is, the more difficult it becomes to communicate with the external world. And people out there might feel that what the organisation is offering is not for them (even when it might actually be), that the opportunity cost to learn this new language is simply too high.

To mitigate the risks, a possibility is to take an outsider approach.

What is the impact the organisation wants to have in the community?
What are the shared values it stands for?
What are the things it seeks to improve?
Why should people (and employees) care?

And then, have reality checks around these topics with people that do not belong, but that should care (somebody would call them stakeholders). Do they get it? Do they actually care? If not, why?

The more the time passes, the more difficult it gets to do just this, so better start early in your journey.

You choose to lie

FabrizioLeave a comment

It is possible, some would say even easy, to lie when you advertise something. When all you care about is getting few more clicks, a bunch more registrations, a bump in your growth line.

There are different types of lie.

The first type of lie is the one that promises. “Buy this and you can be this”, “Register to our webinar and you will find your path”, “Become a pro in few steps”. It is a pretty common strategy, not inherently bad, and it becomes a lie when the promise is simply too much to deliver for what you have to offer.

The second type of lie is the one that misdirects. Wendy’s did not get 300,000 more followers on Twitter after their social media marketing people attended the promoted course. Not to mention that, without context, we do not really know if those 300,000 more followers were or were not a good thing for the company.

The third type of lie is the one that seeks approval. 508 people rewarded this course with 5 stars out of 5 (in average). Of course, there is not way to read the reviews, or the feedback given by any of the 508 people. Be it enough for us to know that’s the case.

It is indeed easy to lie when you advertise something. Is it worth it? Does it get you to where you want to be at the end of the game? That is a whole different matter, one that should get most of your attention.

Do you have anything to say?

FabrizioLeave a comment

Few things you might want to consider if you have something important to communicate inside your organisation over a certain amount of time. It might be a project, a change, a new tool, an improved process, a different structure.

First of all, be ready to reiterate the message. Do not expect everybody to be on the same page after you have sent out an email or updated the internal communication tool. It will take time, so prepare to have something to say about it in different occasions.

And (secondly), prepare to do so on different types of media. People absorb information in different ways. Some prefer to read, some to watch a video, some to watch an infographic. With modern tools, it is very easy to be creative in many forms, make sure you are considering the various ways you can reach your audience with.

Thirdly, pace your communication with a schedule. It’s not ideal to receive 27 notifications from you in 1 single day. As you are working on something that will take time, you should factor time in. What do you have to say today? What this week? What this month? What next month? After all, you’ll have different formats and occasions to talk about what you care, do not overload everybody on the starting line.

Finally, ensure some kind of space for feedback. Communication is never one way, as you progress in your journey, people will have things to say, questions to ask, doubts to raise. Set up occasions for this to happen, and be ready to follow up on what is said. Wait there: “follow up” does not mean “change your plans according to (what is said)”, I hope we are clear on that.

And since a couple of interesting words have (fortunately) crept in the paragraphs above, before you even start make sure you have very clear who your audience is (the whole company? for real?), and what the message you want them to get is (probably, not just how things are going with this or that).

Good luck!