you really need to know this outreach rule

Let me tell you an outreach mistake I see business owners making all the time that makes their clients feel like they’re watching paint dry.

It happens to all of us. We get really excited about our product or our service. We almost fall in love with it and then we think that everyone is in love with it.

So we start talking like a trainspotter talks about trains.

Saying things like “this is a 1972 locomotive that is partially coal fired and can carry this much weight and it’s got a special engine etc”

They usually do this until someone dies of boredom, and then they still go on. If you let them speak at a funeral, the funeral will be seven hours long, filled with train talk.

If you’re selling, doesn’t really matter what, I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say we are selling solar panels. We have to assume that the customer is very familiar with their energy bills and paying for electricity. But solar panels?  They have no idea how they work, what types there are also they don’t care to know.

No one cares. They only care about what it can do for them. So if I was a home owner and somebody started waffling about watts, cables and lithium batteries, I’m just going to zone out.

So we have to meet them where they are. If you are a solar panel installer and you solve the problem of reducing customers energy bills. We have to start talking about that.

“Hi Mr Jones,

Just wanted to reach out.

I help home owners reduce there energy bills by over 60%. If that’s of interest to you please let me know, and I’ll happily tell you more.”

Something like that would work 100x better than starting to lecture them about batteries and gigawatts. They’ve got bills to pay!