The subject line of his email caught my attention right away: "Hi Jill was hoping we may be able to help each other."
His message continued in that theme. It was gracious, non-pretentious and curiosity-evoking. He pulled me in ...
Hi Jill I was hoping we may be able to help each other. We're currently first level contacts on Linkedin and I hope you don't mind my reaching out to you.
I'm interested in exploring mutually beneficial business alliances with you which may allow us to help each other build more business. And, I'd like to offer you 20% of the gross margin of any business you refer to me. Or, if this would be a conflict of interest, I'd be glad to make a donation in your name to your favorite charity.
He then went on to explain the details of how that would work (which was unnecessary since I can do the math) and gave me a short overview of his company.
And then he totally blew it when he said:
Now that was my pitch :) If you have a product or service that I can help you sell, please let me know. I'd be glad to partner with you to help you sell your products or services to our client base if it looks like a good fit.
Excuse me! I thought he was writing me a personal note. When I realized it was a canned email and he hadn't ever bothered looking at my website, I deleted him as fast as I could.
I'm sure he thought he was being nice. I thought he was stupid.
Have you had similar experiences? What bugs you?
Hi Jill! Funny story ;-)
I get these types of emails all the time, and for me... it's the very first sentence that makes me cringe, "Hi Jill I was hoping we may be able to help each other. We're currently first level contacts on Linkedin and I hope you don't mind my reaching out to you."
1. I was hoping we may be able to help each other... (There's got to be a more powerful way to start than that. How about opening with some specifics and say, "Hi Jill, I have some ideas on ways we can work together...")
2. We're Currently 1st level connections... (Too many people are using that line... and I think it's the online equivalent of saying, "I'm calling just to touch base")
3. I hope you don't mind my reaching out to you. (That's so weak it hurts!)
Talk to you soon!
Doyle
Posted by: SalesBlogcast | 12/09/2009 at 07:02 AM
Doyle,
You're just way more popular on LinkedIn than I am. This is the first time a stranger has approached me with this kind of message.
But you're right. If they had a specific idea, it would have been much more compelling.
Jill
Posted by: Jill Konrath | 12/09/2009 at 08:40 PM
Thanks for this article Jill. This is my first time on your site and I can see you've written about some really unique topics, some of which I could certainly use some work;-). But it is amazing just how many people will send out solicitations these days without really doing any leg work upfront. It's almost as if in many ways we've become a society of sales solicitations, but not sales relationships. Keep up the great work, I'm sure you'll see me again.
Posted by: Marcus Sheridan | 12/09/2009 at 10:32 PM
I get those approaches too, Jill. But probably the most common (I get a couple of these just about every day) is an email with "would like to meet" in the subject line. Occasionally I'll actually read one. They usually begin with "Hi Geoff, In this tough economy, many companies are looking to..."
Posted by: Geoff Alexander | 12/18/2009 at 08:57 PM