Personalization

I see so much shit on LinkedIn from influencers saying they personalize outreach to every single prospect...I'm not gonna spend 20 minutes researching someone's son's little league record and the prospect's life history when in most cases outbound prospects don't respond.


Not sure if it's just me and I should actually be doing that, or if it's a load of shit to other people too. Any thoughts?


P.S. this doesn't apply to my tier 1 prospects.

🔎 Prospecting
👑 Sales Strategy
👥 Social Selling
10
CoorsKing
WR Officer
7
Retired King of the Coors Knights
I spend about 30 minutes of prep before every tier 1 email, 15ish before tier 2 emails, and tier 3s I just send to marketing events. 
poweredbycaffeine
WR Lieutenant
6
☕️
Personalization does not mean reading into your prospect's history. It could be as simple as "hey prospect, I'm reaching out because we work with many of your competitors including X, Y, Z...[add hook and copy here]. 
CuriousFox
WR Officer
5
🦊
Every Enterprise deal I'm responsible for? Hell yeah you BEST believe I'm researching every damn detail I possibly can.  I refuse to be put in a corner with other vendors.
SaaSData
Catalyst
4
VP of SaaS & Unit Economics 🏴‍☠️
I'm personalizing EVERYTHING.  But with Automation.

What you need to do is get ahead of what the average person thinks can be personalized.

For example, you're using their posts against them (scrape their posts/activity).  They don't think you could possibly scale by using their posts.

Spend very little time modifying it but call out their post.

The other thing you can do is use their technology stack against them to think you did the research.

Use their own words from a post they made.  Try to use Techno and Firmographics are key here.  (the only other *graphic I use in personalization is Psychographics - which are the OCEAN/DISC scoring mechanism)

If you can use the top 25-30 firmographics, technographics you can still use copy and pasted emails!

It converts WAY higher.

I saw you were hiring for {JOB HIRING FOR TITLE}.  This typically means you're not {YOUR PRODUCT'S VALUE PROP}.  We helped X (John Smith) save Y (Millions), without spending more Z (time-emotion-frustration-negative impact).

This usually works, because the current brain of a person can't imagine how you'd automate all these little fields with a sequencer like Outreach or Salesloft.

The key is being able to copy and paste these fields into your Strategy.  I've personalized the hell out of my emails and it's working well.  I convert at unreal rates using this method.
tentativeonthecalendar
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
Thanks for the insights! This will be super useful to scale personalization 
quinoa
Contributor
0
order taker
"What you need to do is get ahead of what the average person thinks can be personalized." - in what ways do you do this?
hh456
Celebrated Contributor
3
sales
personalization doesn't have to be that deep but what is it worth to you?

if you like making a million dollars a year, 20 minutes ain't no big thang. if you like making 1/3rd of your base because you get fired in month 5, then just spray and pray.
Do.it.for.the.checks
Politicker
1
Account Executive
As with most things in sales it highly depends on the product, market, size, and speed of your deals. I've historically worked for companies that encompass larger deals with a lot of change management needed. So this is the approach I use

Break contacts into two buckets Above the Line and Below the Line. ATL are key decision-makers and someone I want a meeting with. BTL are individuals who will be impacted by the decision but have not personal say in if they use it.

BTL gets automated emails specific to a role within the company. 
ATL gets hyper-personalized emails based on a set of research. 

You not including tier 1 in this, makes me think you've already taken a step like this. But researching the contact's son's little league team is a huge waste of time in B2B. Instead find things related to what makes their business life tough. Annual Reports and competitors' annual reports are a great starting point. If you can call specific facts like this, how they are being impacted, and that there are better answers, you will be surprised how those top dogs will always pick up.
tentativeonthecalendar
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Really helpful info
Diablo
Politicker
1
Sr. AE
Research based personalization can be done for Enterprise and some Mid-market prospects. I never do it for SMB.
tentativeonthecalendar
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
Thanks for the insight. I focus on SMB (and for context, reaching out from a startup) - do you avoid personalization for SMB because they don't have much of an online paper trail?
MinisterOfChaos
Politicker
1
Commercial Account Executive
That's one aspect. Another aspect is that it doesn't need to be that deep to provide insights, "set the hook", etc.

You didn't say in your original post, is this for emails or calls?
tentativeonthecalendar
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
This is primarily about emails but also for LinkedIn messages from time to time.

Any chance you can explain why it doesn't need to be as deep to set the hook with SMB?
MinisterOfChaos
Politicker
0
Commercial Account Executive
I've found that FOMO is a huge driver in SMB sales. Find a relevant competitor that you already work with (shouldn't take too long) and hammer home how you're helping them solve what is most likely a common issue.
LordBusiness
Politicker
1
Chief Revenue Officer
Personalization is the only way to stand out amongst the literal onslaught of automation garbage. Not shitting you, I get 200+ garbage prospecting messages a day, gotta stand out from the noise
tentativeonthecalendar
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
Very fair - I'm still trying to find the balance between personalizing enough to prove that I'm talking directly to the prospect vs. including unnecessary details in outreach
34
Members only

Personalization vs. Relevance

Discussion
32
8

Personalization in Emails

Question
14
19
Members only

Outreach personalization

Question
44
Do you personalize your outreach depending on each client?
77% Of course!
17% Nah, email blast all the way!
6% Comments for any scalable tips
219 people voted