Avoiding “The Latest Sales Trick”

And there’s always a new trick

Want to know why cold outbound is so hard right now?

It’s not the lack of personalization. Or targeting. Or channel.

👉The inconvenient truth: there’s less buyers.

I went to an event a few months back where one of the speakers lambasted common cold outreach techniques. Listed off all kinds of things that don’t work. Nothing you could disagree with. Forced familiarity, poor targeting, etc.

Afterwards, talking to other attendees, we had the same question: What actually DOES work? What’s the silver bullet that will print you piles of cash?

Spoiler: There isn’t one.

If you surf around LinkedIn you’ll see two sales takes:

1. ABC doesn’t work do XYZ instead.

But…does it? If it did, and everyone jumped on that bandwagon, how long until that dries up?

2. From sales pitch receivers: “this is so bad I’d never buy from someone who approaches me like this.”

Except…you did. Like 2 years ago. There’s a reason why people are doing stuff that isn’t working. Because it used to.

What they mean to say is “I’m not buying right now because I’m not a buyer.”

But neither of these things are the real problem with sales right now (aside from the lack of buyers.)

The real problem is transactional sales is the lowest common denominator. And that’s what drives the obsession over The Latest Sales Trick.

At the same event I mentioned earlier, I learned a new (for me) term. “Customer Led Growth.”

It’s apparently the new whiz bang sales motion in SaaS: get your customers to do the selling for you. Referrals and whatnot.

I found this fascinating.

👉It’s how any good services firm grew their business. Since forever.

70-80% of Hirewell’s business is from “Customer Led Growth.” Always has been.

Solution selling is what everyone wants to do. But there’s a catch: It’s exceedingly difficult to pitch a high level, complex solution when you work in a saturated, struggling market. And the buyers click the “report spam” button.

Takeaway is this: Spend less time obsessing about The Latest Sales Trick. Spend more time talking to people you already know, helping where you can, paying it forward. And things will come your way.

It’s literally what LinkedIn was designed to do.

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Full episode of The 10 Minute Talent Rant “Why Hiring Managers Aren’t Responding To Your Pitch” here.