Tomicide Solutions, March 2011

Are Your Follow Up Messages Too Aggressive?

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

Podcast: MP3 Version

Being an avid reader and learner, I sign up for many online programmes to learn new bits and bobs. I do this in spite of knowing that as soon as the presenters get my email address, most of them will start bombarding me with follow-up sales pitches to get as much of my money and as quickly as humanly possible. Well, in general, women are less greedy.

And while I understand and agree that the purpose of sequential autoresponders is to stay in touch with interested people who one day decide that our stuff is valuable and buy something from us, I also believe that the purpose of the process is sharing valuable information with these people and in doing so PRE-selling our stuff in a dignified and professional manner.

Now, I know that at this point some people may say that I'm a useless salesperson, and they are 100% right. If I had to sell my services without properly marketing them first, I would rather lie down, pull a paper bag over my head and let a tree grow through my body.

And follow-up messages and attempts to sell more are fine and dandy. We all want to make money in our businesses. However, what bugs me is the methods some of the so-called gurus use to exhort money from their victims. One of these methods is using aggressive and pushy but otherwise worthless messages.

Just in the last few days I received autoresponder messages with the following subject lines:

"Tom, I'm puzzled." Then in the body of the email the guy explained that he was puzzled because I hadn't given him money after one single pretty aggressive sales pitch in an autoresponder.

Here are some of the subject lines I've received...

Tom, are you a loser?

Tom, I thought you were smart enough to buy...

Tom, how does it feel to be poor?

Tom, are you still struggling?

Tom, are you still dead broke?

Tom, I guess you don't mind sinking your business

Of course, these folks will teach me in one single e-book how to make millions online (most of these folks are online marketing experts, whatever that means) even before I can say ying tong iddle i po.[1]

I think those people need their yings tonged, poes tiddled and be spanked silly.

Or how to lose 140 lbs over the weekend without even getting out of bed. Their programmes require no skills and no effort. They are as easy as falling off a log and filled with lots of fun. Hm. And I guess many poor souls fall for this kind lunacy. Rags to riches in one single e-book. Holy sausage, man. I would even say, holy mother of all sausages. This is amazing. Or maybe it's just scumbaggy. They are inviting me to their football games where they can pass me their slimeballs hoping that one day I catch it and pay for it.

And the other interesting thing these messages have in common is that they slam everything and everyone else out there. Only these people know these "shocking secrets" and no one else.

Have you noticed it? Every copywriter in America is America's best copywriter. Every webhosting company is the world's most reliable webhosting company. Do these idiots actually believe their own bullshit?

So, How To Handle The Follow-Up Process?

First, let's look at the distribution of the target market in terms of readiness, willingness and ability to buy your solutions.

In his book, The Ultimate Sales Machine, Chet Holmes reports that...

Purchase Distribution

As you can see, only 3% of your market is made up by "right now" buyers. 67% are "not now" buyers and 30% are "never ever" buyers.

If your follow-up message is too much pitch-based, you may engage a small percentage of the top 3%, but you may end up pissing off the majority of the 3% and almost all the 67%.

While the top 3% are in buying mode, the other 67% are in research mode.

And yes, if your follow-up messages cater more for research and less for purchase, you may lose a few sales. But if it's the other way round, and your messages are too pitchy and aggressive, you may lose almost everyone, and "unsubscribe" notices will start attacking you pretty ferociously.

So, the idea is to have a good balance of knowledge sharing and offer sharing.

I've recently read on a blog that...

"Copy without content is hucksterism. Content without copy is charity."

The best choice is a healthy blend of both, depending where buyers are in the sales process. And I believe we'd better err on the research side, that is, we assume that the reader is still researching.

And this leads to one more interesting point...

The Denial to Acceptance Continuum

It's the Kübler-Ross grief cycle, named after Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying. She was a Swiss-born psychiatrist and a pioneer in near-death studies.

Kübler-Ross extended grief cycle

Since most buyers are alive when you're marketing to them, why should we bother with near-death experiences?

Well, because their decision-making process is pretty much the same.

But depending how they receive the possible bad news, they respond differently.

When an uninvited pain-in-the-arse peddler says...

"You're the idiot in trouble and I can save your dumb arse."

That may not go down well, and most buyers force a "What, me worry?!" smile on their faces.

Remember it's a confrontation between a reluctant buyer and an overzealous seller right from the beginning. The buyer's guard is high up, and the seller does everything in his power to penetrate the buyer's guard.

So, now we can re-examine the above grief cycle.

1. Stability stage: Buyers believe everything is fine and dandy. "Plastic surgeon, throw away the scalpel, no improvement is possible. We are the best of the best."

2. Immobilisation stage: Buyers hear the bad news and are initially paralysised by it. "Oh, shit! What are you saying? What's the evidence for that? Hell, what should we do?"

3. Denial stage: Trying to avoid facing reality by denying it. Denial at this stage is temporary defence for buyers. "This can't happen to us. We're way above this crap? Our clients love us and our stuff. Our people love us. No, it's not happening. Not in our back yard."

4. Anger stage: Just like a frustrated champagne bottle, after blowing the cork and uncontrollably spewing its content all over the land, years of bottled-up emotions come up from buyers, and the steam of anger is blowing from all of their body orifices.

At this stage buyers realise they can't keep denying reality. These people are very hard to interact with due to their turbulent feelings of rage and envy. "Who the haemorrhaging hell is responsible for this. I'll fire everyone and get the rest hanged, drowned and quartered. Am I surrounded by morons or what?"

5. Bargaining stage: Buyers realise that there is a way out. "There must be something. We must be able to do something about this problem."

6. Depression stage: Comprehending the full magnitude of the situation. "All right, we're in deep shit, but we might also be intelligent enough to do something about it."

7. Testing stage: Buyers and their key people sit down and start working on the solution, including hiring external experts. "We've never had this problem, so we need someone who's solved similar problems many times."

8. Acceptance stage: Finally finding the way forward to overcome this problem. "Eureka! Full steam ahead. We're on track again."

Two Ways Of Going Through This Roller Coaster

When you send out heavily pitch-based follow-up messages, you create a more intense immobilisation but you also send the reader into a more intense denial-anger cycle, and after calming down, they may not forgive you and hit the unsubscribe button.

But let's see first how we want to go through buyer's emotional upheaval.

When you interact with buyers personally, face-to-face or on the phone, you create an initial agitation level in them. Besides digesting your information, they have to keep their guards up to protect themselves from possible sales pitches and closing tricks. All in all, they are not exactly in a receptive state of mind.

This is also called synchronous interaction because you transmit your information in person and your buyers digest your information in person.

But let's look at asynchronous interaction in which you transmit your information through an automated system and your buyers digest your information in person and in peace, with their guards down.

Buyers still get agitated by what they read (reality can be agitating), but now they don't have to worry about camouflaging their agitation in front of eager sellers.

So, as they read your information, they tend to nod in agreement. They basically agree that what they're reading may be happening to their companies.

And since they don't have to put up with the external pressure of a seller's breathing down their necks, they are more agreeable on your points.

Some sellers argue that this approach is too cold and impersonal. Maybe so, but at this point buyers are not interested in personal contacts. All they want to do is to read your information without personal interference from a salesperson.

And this leads us to the next point of...

Fiddling With Immobilisation Levels

So, how to use your information to send readers into moderate immobilisation that only makes them think about their situations but don't get them stark-raving mad at you?

Simple. With valuable, boardroom-calibre information. But with the most intense points referring to their industries not to their companies.

There's a huge difference between the two.

If you refer to their industries, you simply say there is room for improvement. But if you refer to their companies, you essentially call them incompetent. And you can only do that if your clients are masochists.

The key is that you have to use your valuable content to PRE-sell your stuff, while also managing the reader's grief cycle. The grief cycle indicates that your messages have an impact on your readers' emotions too and not only on their minds.

This is the essence; the wasp's nipples. Not selling (sales pitch), but pre-selling (offering valuable and eye-opening content). The more value you provide in your content the more people sell themselves on the idea that you are the "go-to-dude/dudess" in your specific topic.

So, why is this pre-selling phase so important?

Well, call me lazy, but by the time I connect with buyers either face-to-face or on the phone, that is, I'm investing my precious time, I'd like to talk to buyers who are properly positioned, pre-interested, pre-empted, pre-inspired, pre?qualified, and pre?disposed to do business with me.

As the saying goes, shooting fish in a barrel. Or even better; have the fish shoot itself, cook itself and jump onto my plate.

No, it's not about pushing my stuff. It's just about talking to the right people. And that's a reasonable expectation, isn't it?

The way I see it, if I'm selling coffins, I don't want to waste my time on calling neonatal nurses and doctors. Considering my products, newborns are not my main market.

Business is about relationships. The age of the peddler is over. Now we have to take some time to warm our audiences up to doing business with us. And the best way of doing this is by offering valuable, boardroom-calibre information.

No, you don't have to give the store away but there is something in between. Besides, having some information doesn't give people the knowledge and the self-confidence to actually do it.

On my joint venture farms, all the core people know how to slaughter a bull and process him from moo to stew because I've taught them. But when the time comes, it's still me who does the work.

Why?

Because they know how to do it in theory and I've "forced" them to do it once or twice, but having slaughtered and butchered a few hundred bulls over the years, for me, it is cellular-level skill. I have both the knowledge and the self-confidence to do the work.

I think you can easily share 25% of your knowledge (newsletters, follow-up emails with valuable content, teleclasses, etc.), sell 50% of it at affordable prices (information products), and sell the remaining 25% at premium prices (personal consultation).

Can you see why your business has an easier time to succeed if you also sell information products and professional services relevant to your products?

And, yes, it's fine to weave in some promotion into your follow-up messages, but the essence must be the intention of sharing valuable information, so readers can come to their own decisions that your company is the bee's knees of the industry, and it must be the single choice when the readers' companies are ready to buy.

So, what can you share in your follow-up messages. Here are some ideas....

One statistic I use with my market is how traditional sales and selling undermine salespeople's health and personal lives...

So, it clearly shows that cold-selling is a high-stress, high-health-risk profession, and also a high-investment low-return activity. According to McGraw Hill, one single face-to-face appointment costs the selling company some $350 in opportunity costs. And this is where a good qualification process comes in.

And the good qualification process must be based on disqualification. Every step of the way you are looking for reasons NOT to do business with your prospects, unless they come through your specific process. This is vital. Buyers value processes and resent ad-hoc improvisation acts from sellers.

This is what Earl Nightingale had to say about the topic many years ago...

"If instead of working harder on making more money, average businesspeople should spend one hour each day and every day in quiet contemplation of how to be of greater and more creative service to their clienteles, they would be the richer for it."

And that one hour a day could be studying this pre-sell process.

On Summary

At some odd metaphysical level your buyers know that the way you sell to them is the way you will serve them after starting the work. If they are uneasy with your sales process, then there is a good chance they will be uneasy with your collaboration process too.

And that's what they want to stay away from.

They are willing to talk to your salespeople when the time is right. But not before.

And with good pre-selling, you can establish your company as the default "go-to company" for your specific niche.

But this approach also requires that your company has a niche market and very specific capabilities. The "We do IT" approach is far too broad. For which market? And what does IT exactly mean here?

Remember, it's not about making a one-off sale and grabbing the money. It's about establishing your company as a recognised and respected authority in your field, so buyers in your market can seek you out when they need help, so your people don't have to chase them like a fungible vendor.

Come and let's discuss this newsletter issue on my blog...

[1] From the British comedy trio the Goon Show The Ying Tong Song. Continue where you've left off...

Come and let's discuss this newsletter issue on my blog...

Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who helps privately held information technology companies to develop high leverage client acquisition systems and business development teams in order to sell their products and services to premium clients at premium fees and prices. Visit Tom's website at http://www.varjan.com.