Less than 10% of outreach messages actually get a response. The vast majority of all the email and the direct messages you send get ignored royally. Why is this happening and how can you turn that ship around?

Target Not There

Maybe your messaging is amazing but if the person you’re targeting isn’t using the medium you’re doing the outreach on, they are not there to see your message. For example, my target is CEO of B2B Service based companies of at least $5MM revenue. When we tried to target them on Facebook, our messages fell on deaf ears. Similarly, make sure that you’re actually fishing where the fish are.

Message Not Personal

When one of my earlier social selling teams cut and paste a ‘how are you?’ outreach message as our first connection message, it got us very few responses. My new team now uses google, listen notes.com and various other tools to do deeply personalized research on the prospect before ever attempting to reach out. We now have much better response rates. So personalize everything you’re sending in your outreach.

Not Relevant

When you’re not super-niched into who you help and what expensive problem you solve for them, then your messaging isn’t niched either. A generic message that doesn’t have anything to do with your target’s pain isn’t going to be noticed. And it will be rejected and ignored.

Perceived As Generic

Generic has no use. It is a death sentence. When you are saying the same thing as everyone else in your industry, when your outreach is talking about being all things to all types of businesses, you will be rejected. Instead, figure out a way to be different and your outreach will go much farther.

Message About You

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been begging my clients to stop talking about their products and services in outreach (or any) communication with prospects. People just don’t care about you. They will reject you. Instead, try talking about them and their needs in your outreach message and see your response rates blow up.

Not Emotional

If your outreach is funny, fun, personalized, authentic, vulnerable or just plain honest, you will stop being rejected. Emotion is a huge factor in buying and selling. So let the laughs roll and you’ll stop being rejected.

Want to reposition your messaging to grow your leads? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, watch my Podcast on YouTube or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk.