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Sorry I cannot respond immediately to your message as I will be away from the office January 11th through 13th. For urgent matters, please contact me at xxx-555-1212.
Thanks,
Prospect
The bane of a cold-calling salesman’s existence is the Out of Office reply. It means for certain that your email will be relegated with the rest of the newsletters, Groupon deals, junk mail, and solicitations that will clutter an inbox on their return. It means a cold, dead lead for most of you.
But does it have to?
What if you did something different?
What if you separated yourself from the crowd?
What if you replied to the Out of Office email?
Yeah, I went there. I’m putting it out there. I’ll even admit this isn’t my idea, but it’s genius. It shows that your email didn’t come from a robot or an automated list. It shows that you actually can respond (maybe with some humor, if you’re like me) and give them something new to remember.
Not only that but you can use that for intelligence. You now know things about your prospect. You know when they’re gone and when they’ll be back. In some cases you’ll know what they are doing while they aren’t answering your email so you have conversation starters when they get back. I received this real Out of Office message yesterday:
Please note that I will be out of the office with no access to
email/phone as I attempt to hike to the roof of Africa (Mount
Kilimanjaro).
Kindly note the following points of contact:
You’re damn right that gives me all kinds of ammo to work with. Imagine the response I’ll get when he gets down from the mountain and sees an email like this:
“Awesome! That sounds like a great accomplishment and something that is a cool story. The kind of client who takes some time to climb a mountain is the kind of client I want to work with, I’d love to hear about your climb when you get back!”
What have you thought about differently today?
The bar is only getting higher every day.
You used to be able to pretty good at one part of your job to stand out from the crowd. Have slightly better customer service? Have a 24 hour phone line? You won the game if that was your model 20 years ago – be the least painful option.
Then you had to be excellent at one part of your business to stand out. Win awards, get recognized, be brilliant. That is how you stood out 10 years ago, by being a better option.
That doesn’t work anymore. Being brilliant is no longer a differentiator, it is expected. It’s the minimum level needed to be truly successful and sustainable. Buyers are looking to only spend their money on the things that will give them the best result, the best experience, the best return. This is double so as the recession continues globally.
If you are not absolutely brilliant at what you do, and you don’t show that to your clients, you are losing. Start to show your awesomeness now if you have it, and if you don’t – it’s time to change what you do.
Disuse atrophy of muscles (muscle atrophy) and bones, with loss of mass and strength, can occur after prolonged immobility, such as extended bedrest, or having a body part in a cast (living in darkness for the eye, bedridden for the legs etc.). This type of atrophy can usually be reversed with exercise unless severe. Astronauts in microgravity must exercise regularly to minimize atrophy of their limb muscles.
From Wikipedia
In the course of recording Don’t Sell Me Bro last week, we interviewed Andia Winslow – US Olympic hopeful in the Skeleton and someone who is looking to get her business off the ground. Coming from an athletic background she dropped a great term on us – Business Disuse Atrophy.
Much like the muscle atrophy above, your business skills will lose mass and strength. It’s easy to get away with taking some time off from selling when business is good, your future work schedule is stacked up and you’re no longer worried about paying rent next month.
However, just like your endurance wanes when sitting on the couch watching sports instead of playing them, your sales skills will get rusty just the same. Some simple steps to keep this from happening to you:
- Educate Yourself: My guess is if you are here you’re already doing some of this. But read about your craft, read about what you want to get better at, take a class, read things that don’t seem necessarily related but tax your brain. Give yourself the chance to learn something that you can apply to your business and try something new.
- Schedule Your Workout: Take some time on your calendar every week to do sales related tasks. Block a couple of hours for prospecting, a couple of hours for reconnecting with past clients, and even some time for checking on deals you thought were dead. Put that time on your calendar as an appointment with yourself and keep that appointment!
- Get a Coach: When you want to take your game up to the next level, you’ll have to have someone push you beyond what you think are your limits. A coach or trainer in the gym will push, yell, bribe, and pull you to your best workout, so why not in business? Have a coworker partner with you on this, where you’ll work to hold each other accountable to getting better. Work by yourself? Get a fellow solo entrepreneur to have lunch with once a week and check in on each other. If you can’t do that, find a group online to start this process
Keep your business muscles worked out and they’ll be there when you need them.
