September 10, 2017

Reactions to Credit Union Outreach

Readers have been sending in quite a bit of feedback in response to my ongoing series of messages about my credit union outreach campaign.

The messages I’ve received generally fall into one of three categories:

Effusively positive
Utterly confused
Vaguely disgusted

Effusively positive

Thank you to everyone who took the time to send in positive feedback! Sending out an email every day takes a fair amount of time and dedication. It is extremely encouraging to get replies from people like:

“This is exactly what I needed to hear!”
“Your message came at the perfect time!”
“You should publish these as a compiliation!”

I’ve even been invited onto a podcast or two to discuss my outreach experience. I’ll be sure to let you know when those are published :-)

Utterly confused

When I get questions about outreach, they’re usually extremely tactical and specific. Questions like:

“How did you introduce yourself to the buyer in a disarming way?”
“What did you say to convince the buyer to trust you?”
“How did you have a conversation with an ideal buyer without being sales-y?”

These are perfectly reasonable questions, but they indicate to me that I haven’t done a good job communicating the bigger picture. Once you understand the big picture, the answers to questions like these become obvious. I’ll keep at it :-)

Vaguely disgusted

Some people would rather eat glass than send an unsolicited email to a potential buyer. I get it... when you’ve been besieged by spammers for at least a decade, you start to hate those low-lifes with the heat of a thousand suns. The idea of becoming one of these scum bags is repulsive. Like succumbing to the dark side.

Here’s the distinction: not all unsolicited email is spam. I get unsolicited email all the time that makes me pump my fist in excitement. An invitation to speak at conference, or guest on a podcast, or have a chat about a possible consulting gig, or to partner on a project.

If you don’t want to be a spammer, don’t be spammy. That doesn’t mean you can’t send unsolicited email.

Yours,

—J