There's some interesting discussion in there about cold emails and cold calls. It proposes that you should be emailing/calling prospects about a problem you think they have. (Do some research first instead of just saying, "I know nothing, tell me about your day").
The rule of thumb this book recommends is 50%. If you don't get a 50% response rate from emails or calls, you either picked the wrong or too wide of a demographic, or the problem you think potential customers have isn't the biggest type of problem. Iterate the demographic, or iterate the problem statement.
I've been using a variant of the 50% rule in an online survey/Google ad, and it's led to some very effective output. It's helped me pick headlines and solution ideas, that get a bunch of interest from people. I created a product the other day (just a landing page pitching people pay me X to do a specific type of project for them) and I had sales that same day.
Part of the trick is I don't even have a demographic or problem statement. I'm trolling for ideas with my lure in the water, sailing in circles. Consequently, 50% response rate would be a miracle. But maybe not for cold calls, we'll see.
Also, the whole buy some adwords and do a landing page thing worked for you? I have had zero luck with this approach. How niche was your idea? It seems like a rare combination where 1) The adwords are affordable, and 2) There is enough search traffic to generate real data.
Not having a demo or problem statement is tough probably? And you might find some great stuff using your lure like you are doing.
But I can't help feel you might have more fun and possibly better effectiveness if go the trite "scratch your own itch" route, or at least focus on demographics you are in or closely related to. You like tshirts? Call tshirt companies and focus on their problems. If you're calling on plumbing companies, great if that's what you're into. But you probably have at least a couple hobby areas you are much more interested in than plumbing. If you like puzzles, calling on game making/puzzle companies with something like "I love the games you are developing!" because you actually like their stuff is likely going to raise your response rates too.
Yeah, Adwords/Facebook/LinkedIn can work. Wasn't too niche. I targeted a pretty wide group, and the survey just asked "What's your biggest problem. A/B/C/D/other" and "How much of a hassel is that problem? Big, medium, small". You want a lot of "big" answers to one of those problems.
My deal is that I already went down the 'scratch your own itch' path, totally ignorant of the customer development approach and got burnt bad. So now I am going extreme opposite. My guess is there is a happy middle ground I need to drift back towards. I'll keep your advice in mind.
All my hobbies are too nerdy, and therefor over-served btw. Except one: sailing. Maybe I should take a harder look at that.
I've had summer jobs that involve cold-contacting people in the same university that I worked in. The response rate to my initial email (sent from a university email address internally, directly related to the jobs of these people) was rarely above 10%. Calling them inevitably got "oh yeah, I saw that email". That was the point that our actual relationship started.
I was never a huge fan of calling people, but I was forced to learn. It's definitely helped in subsequent business relationships. Email just isn't a way to communicate with the wider public.
It's easy to forget that just because you spent 11 hours on something means that the person reading it will give it anything close to that. They're going to give you about 20 seconds. Long essays explaining everything never work. A short, to the point email with a couple of numbered questions works, and it means that inevitably when you call them the next day they can quickly get up to speed with what you're contacting them about.
There's a tendency in tech-related areas to assume that everyone treats their email the same as you do, but in my experience the less techy a person is, the less they consider email to be important.
I'm realizing deeper into the tech world I go the more signals tossed in all directions my way. I don't see spam though, I don't see the viagra ads or the russian wives. That's a testament to Google, Mailchimp, and the bevy of email marketers.
But I still have needs, wants, and requirements for work, personal, or consumption. So rather I see relevance and irrelevance of all these things tossed me way. That's spam's inevitability.
That Banksy item is pretty old. I'm getting a slight chuckle that an Instagram shot of a blog post posted on Twitter is getting play. Then I remembered I saw it on Tumblr last night.
If you are getting 1 meeting from 50 emails and you're not even trying to sell something, you are doing something wrong.
I have to think that cold calls convert better than emails. That’s probably the real answer here. Get on the phone and start calling. It’s a scary prospect for an introverted nerd like me. It comes down to this: The hustle must overcome the nerd. And it shall.
I dunno, have you had much luck w/ cold calling vs email? I think e-mail is a lot more effective as it's faster and can be automated where cold calling simply can't be automated and no one likes getting called on the phone when they're doing something else. Everyone works off of e-mail these days.
And I've done both, I've had way better results with cold e-mails, 1 meeting out of 50 emails is probably about right for the first time, if he e-mails everyone two more times that number will go up a bit. Particularly if he's not selling anything. If I'm running a business, why would I want to meet with a guy who just wants to talk about my business? I'd rather meet with someone that at least claims to know my business and is working on a vague new product and wants to get my feedback on it.
What took the longest for me wasn't the sending of the emails, but the research that went into finding who to email.
This would be the same deal if I was cold calling. And I'm not sure how to automate this, you just have to slog through it. You can only call or email as many people as you can find after all. So that's the bottle neck.
So if the time investment is a wash, then it's really a question of what converts better, not based on bulk. I have a feeling calls will...but I don't have the personal data to prove it yet.
It's interesting you had bad experience with calls though. Were you selling something? Maybe that's the difference.
You can automate it a good deal with a mix of scraping and mturk, but that will result in both e-mails and phone #s, so your choice on what to do with them.
And experience w/ calls--I wouldn't say it was bad experience, it was just better with e-mail--tends to cut to the chase and replies are a better indication of interest. Everyone's selling something--even if you just want to talk to someone about their problems, you're still selling them on the proposition that it would be a more valuable use of their time talking to you than doing something else. And that doesn't make you a bad person, it just doesn't make a difference whether you're asking for money or someone's time.
But yeah, would be very interested to see your results w/ cold calling vs email, if you do two more rounds of e-mails and leave 3 vm messages on your cold calling before giving up, I'll bet you still do better with e-mail. But again, very interested to see your numbers, so very cool experiment!
I don't think he did anything wrong. It's a cold email after all. Imagine you get an email from an unknown entity and they say "Hey there my name is X from company Y and I'm not selling anything but want to learn more about the problems folks in your industry may have to better serve my current and future clients".
Now, you're a busy business owner/decision maker and lots of people want a piece of you. You're inbox is always filling up with junk and even the non-junk you often don't have much time for. So assuming you even decide to read past the first sentence, if at all, you might decide that you'll write back but not right now so you mark the email as unread but never return to it as the inbox just keeps filling.
That's a best case scenario in my book. Others probably delete the thing immediately and those who open it and read it may wonder if there's a catch because no stranger gets in touch with your business unless they either want what you sell or want you to buy from them. A "I'm-not-selling-anything" email may reek of deception to a lot of people. I know it does for me.
Even with cold calling getting 1 in 50 is a success. I think you're being too quick to judge here. I think he did a great job and I think he's actually be a little hard on himself to be perfectly honest. I'm always reminded of Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" speech when I hear these kinds of stories. On the outside it seems like a failure and it's all too easy to criticize but the man in the arena is to be respected even if he fails miserably because in this world so few people even have the balls to enter the arena in the first place. We live in a spectator society. Most people are armchair quarterbacks and eventually the ones with the balls to try something brave or dumb or risky are rewarded so long as they keep going.
Okay, sorry to re-reply but here are the two versions of the email I sent. Mind skimming them and tell me what I did horribly, horribly wrong? I'd honestly love your feedback. I think I would follow something shorter than this but the same in spirit for cold phone calls. So maybe you can save me some pain and anguish.
Polite Version:
Dear %fill:FirstName%,
First off, sorry for this out of the blue email. I found your name %fill:FoundYourNameSource%, and was hoping you might be able to help me.
My name is Ian Fitzpatrick, I'm the founder of a small software company in Saint Paul. I'm investigating ideas for my next software product, and I'm interested in creating an application that serves your industry.
I see that you're a %fill:JobRole% at %fill:CompanyName%. Are there any parts of your job that you feel are a hassle, repetitive, or error-prone -- where if you had the right software at work, your life might be a little easier? That's the kind of thing I'm super interested in hearing about.
If you have just 20 minutes available any time this week, I'd love the meet and pick your brain. I'm honestly just trying to learn, and hopefully create a product that makes your life a little easier.
Impolite Version:
Hi %fill:FirstName%,
I’m a software developer investigating some projects ideas in the %fill:IndustryName%. I’d like to understand the problems and successes you've had at %fill:CompanyName% a bit better. I’m not trying to sell you anything, I would just like to hear your thoughts on a few things related to the industry.
Do you have 20 minutes available to meet at some point in the next week? I'd like to conduct an informal interview with you.
Hi, I'm Ian, the author of the blog post. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm a little late to this thread.
I'm a fan of your posts and listened to the the interview you gave (eh the link escapes me) and found it super interesting.
After listening to your interview, one thing that I thought of was the advantage you had in at least starting with an industry that you know exists. You can speak their lingo already, you may have some theories on their problems, etc.
But what if you are starting from scratch? In my case, I'm going totally blue sky and just contacting random industries. I contacted farm inspectors, CNC milling companies, elevator repair companies, OSHA consultants, and other random companies. And how honest would you be about your approach, and your ignorance of their industry?
So far I've taken the approach of being as honest and authentic as possible. Perhaps to a fault, I should probably fake up some confidence.
Another thought I had, I think you may have mentioned this in the podcast interview, is in addition to "making it about them" is to offer something of value in return. I have a background in IT support and consulting. So one thing I was thinking to offer was a free IT assessment of their network. Maybe even include an attached invoice with the amounts zero'd out.
I know that the cold email approach is inferior to calling, but I wanted to dip my toe before I took the plunge into cold calls. For what it's worth the one on-site interview I got just lead to a second interview with a different company last week. So I wouldn't say these emails are totally worthless.
Also, what's your workflow for finding cold prospects? I found the most time consuming task was just creating a spreadsheet of contacts, and googling for companies. Maybe I should go to a business library and work with a librarian or something.
That's about what I was thinking, too. It might be good to explicitly say that they would have a lot of influence over the product, so it would ideally be well-suited to their needs. And, they would have special privileges/discounts/whatever, when it hits the market. What do people think about extending/stating those kinds of things, or does that set expectations too high?
I'd nix the money part. This is all about good communication. If you communicate your intention to help the person you're emailing in some way early then you've changed the whole dynamic of the interaction.
If you say "I'm a smart guy looking to solve problems, can I pick your brain?" then you've hurt yourself. You've created a situation where you are asking for help and not giving it.
If you say "I'm a smart guy who's been researching problems in your industry and would like to toss some ideas at you to see if they'd be helpful for people like you" then you've created a situation where both people benefit. You're getting your questions answered and the mark is getting ideas that could potentially help him too.
This is a really simplified version but the idea of creating a relationship that benefits the other person makes it far more likely that they'll agree to what you're asking.
http://www.amazon.com/Nail-then-Scale-Entrepreneurs-ebook/dp...
There's some interesting discussion in there about cold emails and cold calls. It proposes that you should be emailing/calling prospects about a problem you think they have. (Do some research first instead of just saying, "I know nothing, tell me about your day").
The rule of thumb this book recommends is 50%. If you don't get a 50% response rate from emails or calls, you either picked the wrong or too wide of a demographic, or the problem you think potential customers have isn't the biggest type of problem. Iterate the demographic, or iterate the problem statement.
I've been using a variant of the 50% rule in an online survey/Google ad, and it's led to some very effective output. It's helped me pick headlines and solution ideas, that get a bunch of interest from people. I created a product the other day (just a landing page pitching people pay me X to do a specific type of project for them) and I had sales that same day.