Ballad of Selling Letters
On Facebook, I came across a very interesting post “The Ballad of Selling Letters” on the page of Anton Gladkov . I can not share this with Habr, as the material is extremely useful. But for this it was necessary to make a rewrite, since the original is saturated with words prohibited here. I hope a harmless vegetable under the jelly can at least partially convey the author's emotions without breaking the rules.
Recently, I especially often come across articles and posts on social networks and other Internet sites that curse LinkedIn's effectiveness. Especially in Russia, where businessmen even consider Facebook as more suitable for business negotiations. In the west, LinkedIn is also fashionable not to love: articles about the dangers of endorses, 10 reasons not to write or accept recommendations, and similar nonsense.
')
In fact, the tools were invented to scold even before the advent of the Internet and most likely long before our era. We were lucky enough to work now, when the Internet is in our pockets and I would like to talk about the main reason for not loving this or that modern Internet sales channel - about the fucking first letters.
So what we usually do not like? - Never mind!
LinkedIn? There is no one there, they write irrelevant people, some spam is constantly, incomprehensible interface, in short - upstart and govnoservis.
Post office? Something doesn’t answer me, and even the correspondence is lost, and in general, everything is somehow slow.
Phone? Expensive, and not every room is easy to find. In addition, the three-day MBA courses, and at Harvard, do not teach such simple things as human communication on the phone, so they constantly send him to hell.
Skype? Who sells on Skype? Especially in Russia (rofl)
Conference? Expensive, everything is organized out of hands, the conference is useless, the set of participants is complete shit.
Well yes. And the girls are difficult to meet, because "all women are fools" (c)
So what's the real problem? Why don't they answer you in LinkedIn or in the mail? In general, there are only two reasons: you and you.
The first number is poor speech. Read the books and, perhaps, then your fingers run more confidently over the keyboard, and the text will not show pathological tightness that overlaps the effect of the information being conveyed. For the text to work, you need to be able to write it, and for this you need to keep in mind a lot of other people's texts. The pitches of most managers are boring, the logic is elusive, it all annoys so much that even sending laziness. Therefore, most of these letters simply do not respond.
What else? Your robotic inhumanity! Even if your pitch text and factology are perfect, you have a tremendous risk of stumbling upon an insufficiently motivated (at the moment) person who, for one of the myriad reasons, is simply unable to work right now. And by the way, this is exactly what you are offering him to do. The reasons are important, we must keep them in mind, preferably in all their diversity: no one told the dude what he should do at all; quarrel with the boss / loved one; the cat gave birth; the salary suddenly seemed too small; on the road kotsnul favorite car; learned too late about the existence of condoms; a sedative prescribed by the doctor turned off the brain; best friend stole her husband (often the opposite). There are also clever men who can decide that they already have too many important letters, so 80% can be safely noted read or put aside for later (there will be a lot of time in hell), because some results will still be there, and the boss will not suspect anything, and does not abuse. To the question “What would you do if 800 mail letters were found in your mailbox in the morning?” Some workers of the knife and ax at the interview seriously answer, “I would have marked them with readings, if they need to, let them write again!”. Before clicking on the “send a letter” button, be sure that such a person is already sitting there. If not - lucky, you can rejoice, but not for long.
Frankly, there are much more reasons to put people on your letter than to respond to it politely and thoughtfully.
Why do you need to keep all this in mind? Constantly feeling the diversity of other people's problems, you become tolerant of short-term setbacks. Now you understand that they are all people there too, you see beyond your nose - not only your victories and defeats, but the processes that form the conditions for a particular outcome. Grayness and monotony are the main enemies of sales. It is very easy to lose a letter if it is very similar to 500 other letters, and even there are no necessary technologies that help these letters not to lose (99% of companies do not have such letters, or they are there, but no one uses them).
One should not underestimate the whole force of pofigism of an unmotivated or depressed person in negotiations and deals. Only a lively and eloquent letter, which kindly tells the bored manager everything he needs to know, can help.
A typical manager’s “at that end” line of thought:
Do you need to think about the read for a long time? Can I just agree with a smart look and type to transfer to the next department? Was it nice to read? Well, people like normal, not a bot of some kind. Well, okay, so be it. Before you go for the cookies and drop in at 6 o'clock to the heifers from technical support, I’ll answer “ok” and add the light to the CC, let her suffer.
Keep in mind: you really do not have one chance, but a whole infinity. Do not be afraid to experiment. An unsuccessful pitch does not guarantee defeat, but, on the contrary, moves a stone up to a millimeter, bringing it to the top of the mountain, where the right pitch is located, and, as a consequence, the desired result.
The formula is 100% success in any transaction: ** number of attempts / quality of attempts **, where the number of attempts is a figure (sometimes with a large number of zeros), and quality is a composite variable of experience, skill and talent. These indicators determine how adequate we are and how appropriate we write things, as well as the relevance of the person to whom we translate exactly what we are broadcasting.
What govnopitchi happen, and how to live with it?
Everyone really wonders who you are, what kind of person you are. If you start your letter with the words: “AirHeneair Air Company testifies its respect to you”, and in the basement of the letter, instead of the name, indicate only the post “AirHeneir sales manager”, then you have big problems. It's a shame, but in ~ 10% of cases, after reading the first letter, I don’t even know what the name of the opponent is, because it is not written anywhere. I still do not know if there is a profit in this dialogue, but I am already uncomfortable - I can not follow the rules of decency. I have to think how to answer correctly, how to start my letter? I am a polite person, and I don’t want to write: “Hey, bitch, send me an offer for a pager", as they like in large companies, and especially in our vast spaces. I want to have a dialogue with a living person. Kind, sweet, affectionate, ideally female, with long eyelashes there, legs, without a beard. Oops.
When we communicate about business, we do not ascend to the Almighty, and objectively we remain two pieces of meat that are not averse to a good company, a mug of delicious beer, a good joke, and intellectual conversation. There is no way to emphasize your status better than being polite, open and friendly with a stranger.
Very often they write something like this to me: “Anton, tell me, how do we get a key to your metasearch? Director ******* Cyril ”. It is probably difficult to be a director, having such scant ideas about how to properly communicate with people. In the head of such a person there are many self-satisfied thoughts, they say, how cool he is saving his time, the illusion about his own pro-efficiency. In fact, 85% of communication in this form is absolutely not effective, and instead of saving, we get empty dialogues that just happen there somehow, but without exhaust. Already by the second letter, this person will lose the thread of the conversation, or will forget to answer at all, because it is completely obvious that he is not interested in the process of communication, only the result is interesting, which obviously should fall from the sky simply because of the corresponding desire of the director.
But hell! This is not how it works, we must urgently look for the team of a normal negotiator. Where it would be more fun to communicate with you, write you “Good afternoon, Anton. I am incredibly pleased to meet you. I noticed in your contact list that you like hiphop, I recently bought a disool wooteng. Hope you enjoy your week? Yesterday I crashed my car, but even this sad fact brightens up the opportunity to talk with you. So, I would really like to discuss one thing ... ”
It's just great! Please do not tell me what you do not like.
I received such a letter and you will sit, sincerely thinking how to extract more profit for this nice and kind person within your guideline. And how should you try. And it will be right.
Here is my personal TOP-5 starter letters, which are striking in their uselessness:
Listen, dude, you're the one writing me. First, why did you decide that I even have a suggestion? What is your idea, why did you even write to me? Who in the end are you? It is impolite to write like that even if it is completely obvious that I need a contract with this brand. Impolite behavior is weakness. In negotiations, it is rather doubtful to begin with a demonstration of our weaknesses.
He is tempting to answer, they say, “yes, hell to you!” Although the correct answer is “Yes, of course, let's talk.” And you better add to this correct answer also “Call at any time, but better now” - this will help avoid the following the letter of this person, which sounds like this: “How much and when would you be more comfortable?”
Listen, if you really wanted to talk about cooperation, maybe you should start right from this conversation? Three letters would gracefully turn into one letter. This is an average of five (!!!) days of savings in the framework of this transaction, if we assume that, on average, for each letter, the response of people really immersed in the work takes about 1-1.5 days, simply because of the rotation of the dialogues in the box.
Figley want to here? Just take it and call. Hochunov in general, nemerno, still, sometimes they come in like this: "We would like to discuss the possibility of cooperation." All right, now fall on the spot.
I would spend at least twice as much time reading this letter and writing a creative answer to it than talking about it by phone. If your opponent builds his life in such a way that one call of his phone can seriously harm his business or life, then he somehow does not live correctly, do not you think? Just don’t beat your brains and call. Friends and relatives call him ten times a day, loading with all nonsense, and you call to offer money. Yes, he just dreams of your call! And if you don’t dream, then the old-school bassoon will be long and slow for you in any case, and you’ll definitely not get any worse from starting with a call.
Why write a whole letter about it? After all, the offer is not a mail pigeon will come, but also a letter? And what prevents everything that I have to read in the sentence, describe here in two small paragraphs, right in the letter? That would be very kind of you.
In general, summarizing, we get this:
At the moment, the classic first sales letter looks like this: “I fucking understand who, I fucking understand what is interesting, I would like to fuck up about it knows what to talk to you, hell knows what purpose and hell knows how, and it’s unclear nichren when. „
I would like to emphasize the main idea a hundred times: think more about it and ask yourself one time each time before pressing the hotkey to send a letter - “WHAT IS YOUR LETTER USEFUL?” The answer to this question should be compared with the spoken vector that leads you to your ultimate goal , for the sake of which the fingers moved along the keyboard, while you need to draw the spoken vector of your opponent with a dotted line, and the more different the degrees of your vectors are, the longer you need to think through the facts of your letter. In 90% of cases, a letter can be made only one and a half times longer, but ten or even a hundred times more efficient.
The first letter should give comprehensive information. You have to work for yourself and for that guy. To figure out how this deal will be useful to him personally? How is she useful to his company? And what exactly will his department get? How to extract the maximum benefit from this, while closing all the goals of your company? As a rule, if your product is really good, there is a benefit by default there, and it’s just silly not to get involved in a deal.
You want to talk, not with stupid questions, but to talk about partnership? Well, and describe everything you need to know in order to discuss this partnership. Do not force a person to write you stupid questions. There is a high probability that, on the other end of the line, it’s not a hired slave who is sitting, but Mr. businessman, his need to ask you stupid questions is especially annoying.
How to knock on the door to strangers? It is hardly enough to just knock, and shout at the top of your mouth: "This is Vasya, open it." At best, you will be answered: “What Vasya?”. So with a welcoming letter of sale. In general, I will even prepare for you a universal checklist:
Have written a letter? Check by checklist. All OK? Send, fasten belts, enjoy the incoming flow of letters.
Any channel is the most effective. Just think what and why you are writing. And the last - if your pitch is in order, but you have not been answered - ping. Enough tolerating this! Ping is not one, not two, not three times. Ping a hundred times. You will be surprised by the percentage of transactions that it is quite realistic to conclude stupidly with your fingers and keyboard.
And, of course, I am categorical in some places. You know good managers to whom all this is undoubtedly not applicable. Not all the managers we have to work with are complete mudlanavts. Total about 80%. Which is better - 20% of deals or 100%?
Pease
Recently, I especially often come across articles and posts on social networks and other Internet sites that curse LinkedIn's effectiveness. Especially in Russia, where businessmen even consider Facebook as more suitable for business negotiations. In the west, LinkedIn is also fashionable not to love: articles about the dangers of endorses, 10 reasons not to write or accept recommendations, and similar nonsense.
')
In fact, the tools were invented to scold even before the advent of the Internet and most likely long before our era. We were lucky enough to work now, when the Internet is in our pockets and I would like to talk about the main reason for not loving this or that modern Internet sales channel - about the fucking first letters.
So what we usually do not like? - Never mind!
LinkedIn? There is no one there, they write irrelevant people, some spam is constantly, incomprehensible interface, in short - upstart and govnoservis.
Post office? Something doesn’t answer me, and even the correspondence is lost, and in general, everything is somehow slow.
Phone? Expensive, and not every room is easy to find. In addition, the three-day MBA courses, and at Harvard, do not teach such simple things as human communication on the phone, so they constantly send him to hell.
Skype? Who sells on Skype? Especially in Russia (rofl)
Conference? Expensive, everything is organized out of hands, the conference is useless, the set of participants is complete shit.
Well yes. And the girls are difficult to meet, because "all women are fools" (c)
So what's the real problem? Why don't they answer you in LinkedIn or in the mail? In general, there are only two reasons: you and you.
The first number is poor speech. Read the books and, perhaps, then your fingers run more confidently over the keyboard, and the text will not show pathological tightness that overlaps the effect of the information being conveyed. For the text to work, you need to be able to write it, and for this you need to keep in mind a lot of other people's texts. The pitches of most managers are boring, the logic is elusive, it all annoys so much that even sending laziness. Therefore, most of these letters simply do not respond.
What else? Your robotic inhumanity! Even if your pitch text and factology are perfect, you have a tremendous risk of stumbling upon an insufficiently motivated (at the moment) person who, for one of the myriad reasons, is simply unable to work right now. And by the way, this is exactly what you are offering him to do. The reasons are important, we must keep them in mind, preferably in all their diversity: no one told the dude what he should do at all; quarrel with the boss / loved one; the cat gave birth; the salary suddenly seemed too small; on the road kotsnul favorite car; learned too late about the existence of condoms; a sedative prescribed by the doctor turned off the brain; best friend stole her husband (often the opposite). There are also clever men who can decide that they already have too many important letters, so 80% can be safely noted read or put aside for later (there will be a lot of time in hell), because some results will still be there, and the boss will not suspect anything, and does not abuse. To the question “What would you do if 800 mail letters were found in your mailbox in the morning?” Some workers of the knife and ax at the interview seriously answer, “I would have marked them with readings, if they need to, let them write again!”. Before clicking on the “send a letter” button, be sure that such a person is already sitting there. If not - lucky, you can rejoice, but not for long.
Frankly, there are much more reasons to put people on your letter than to respond to it politely and thoughtfully.
Why do you need to keep all this in mind? Constantly feeling the diversity of other people's problems, you become tolerant of short-term setbacks. Now you understand that they are all people there too, you see beyond your nose - not only your victories and defeats, but the processes that form the conditions for a particular outcome. Grayness and monotony are the main enemies of sales. It is very easy to lose a letter if it is very similar to 500 other letters, and even there are no necessary technologies that help these letters not to lose (99% of companies do not have such letters, or they are there, but no one uses them).
One should not underestimate the whole force of pofigism of an unmotivated or depressed person in negotiations and deals. Only a lively and eloquent letter, which kindly tells the bored manager everything he needs to know, can help.
A typical manager’s “at that end” line of thought:
Do you need to think about the read for a long time? Can I just agree with a smart look and type to transfer to the next department? Was it nice to read? Well, people like normal, not a bot of some kind. Well, okay, so be it. Before you go for the cookies and drop in at 6 o'clock to the heifers from technical support, I’ll answer “ok” and add the light to the CC, let her suffer.
Keep in mind: you really do not have one chance, but a whole infinity. Do not be afraid to experiment. An unsuccessful pitch does not guarantee defeat, but, on the contrary, moves a stone up to a millimeter, bringing it to the top of the mountain, where the right pitch is located, and, as a consequence, the desired result.
The formula is 100% success in any transaction: ** number of attempts / quality of attempts **, where the number of attempts is a figure (sometimes with a large number of zeros), and quality is a composite variable of experience, skill and talent. These indicators determine how adequate we are and how appropriate we write things, as well as the relevance of the person to whom we translate exactly what we are broadcasting.
What govnopitchi happen, and how to live with it?
You are a person
Everyone really wonders who you are, what kind of person you are. If you start your letter with the words: “AirHeneair Air Company testifies its respect to you”, and in the basement of the letter, instead of the name, indicate only the post “AirHeneir sales manager”, then you have big problems. It's a shame, but in ~ 10% of cases, after reading the first letter, I don’t even know what the name of the opponent is, because it is not written anywhere. I still do not know if there is a profit in this dialogue, but I am already uncomfortable - I can not follow the rules of decency. I have to think how to answer correctly, how to start my letter? I am a polite person, and I don’t want to write: “Hey, bitch, send me an offer for a pager", as they like in large companies, and especially in our vast spaces. I want to have a dialogue with a living person. Kind, sweet, affectionate, ideally female, with long eyelashes there, legs, without a beard. Oops.
Your opponent is a person
When we communicate about business, we do not ascend to the Almighty, and objectively we remain two pieces of meat that are not averse to a good company, a mug of delicious beer, a good joke, and intellectual conversation. There is no way to emphasize your status better than being polite, open and friendly with a stranger.
Very often they write something like this to me: “Anton, tell me, how do we get a key to your metasearch? Director ******* Cyril ”. It is probably difficult to be a director, having such scant ideas about how to properly communicate with people. In the head of such a person there are many self-satisfied thoughts, they say, how cool he is saving his time, the illusion about his own pro-efficiency. In fact, 85% of communication in this form is absolutely not effective, and instead of saving, we get empty dialogues that just happen there somehow, but without exhaust. Already by the second letter, this person will lose the thread of the conversation, or will forget to answer at all, because it is completely obvious that he is not interested in the process of communication, only the result is interesting, which obviously should fall from the sky simply because of the corresponding desire of the director.
But hell! This is not how it works, we must urgently look for the team of a normal negotiator. Where it would be more fun to communicate with you, write you “Good afternoon, Anton. I am incredibly pleased to meet you. I noticed in your contact list that you like hiphop, I recently bought a disool wooteng. Hope you enjoy your week? Yesterday I crashed my car, but even this sad fact brightens up the opportunity to talk with you. So, I would really like to discuss one thing ... ”
It's just great! Please do not tell me what you do not like.
I received such a letter and you will sit, sincerely thinking how to extract more profit for this nice and kind person within your guideline. And how should you try. And it will be right.
Avoid dumb letters, time burners
Here is my personal TOP-5 starter letters, which are striking in their uselessness:
“Hello, Anton. Drop us a look at your offer, we would like to work with your metasearch. ”
Listen, dude, you're the one writing me. First, why did you decide that I even have a suggestion? What is your idea, why did you even write to me? Who in the end are you? It is impolite to write like that even if it is completely obvious that I need a contract with this brand. Impolite behavior is weakness. In negotiations, it is rather doubtful to begin with a demonstration of our weaknesses.
“Can we talk to you about cooperation?”
He is tempting to answer, they say, “yes, hell to you!” Although the correct answer is “Yes, of course, let's talk.” And you better add to this correct answer also “Call at any time, but better now” - this will help avoid the following the letter of this person, which sounds like this: “How much and when would you be more comfortable?”
Listen, if you really wanted to talk about cooperation, maybe you should start right from this conversation? Three letters would gracefully turn into one letter. This is an average of five (!!!) days of savings in the framework of this transaction, if we assume that, on average, for each letter, the response of people really immersed in the work takes about 1-1.5 days, simply because of the rotation of the dialogues in the box.
“We would like to call you to discuss the opportunity to work together”
Figley want to here? Just take it and call. Hochunov in general, nemerno, still, sometimes they come in like this: "We would like to discuss the possibility of cooperation." All right, now fall on the spot.
“There is something to discuss in voice — how much and when to call you?”
I would spend at least twice as much time reading this letter and writing a creative answer to it than talking about it by phone. If your opponent builds his life in such a way that one call of his phone can seriously harm his business or life, then he somehow does not live correctly, do not you think? Just don’t beat your brains and call. Friends and relatives call him ten times a day, loading with all nonsense, and you call to offer money. Yes, he just dreams of your call! And if you don’t dream, then the old-school bassoon will be long and slow for you in any case, and you’ll definitely not get any worse from starting with a call.
“Now I will send you our offer”
Why write a whole letter about it? After all, the offer is not a mail pigeon will come, but also a letter? And what prevents everything that I have to read in the sentence, describe here in two small paragraphs, right in the letter? That would be very kind of you.
In general, summarizing, we get this:
At the moment, the classic first sales letter looks like this: “I fucking understand who, I fucking understand what is interesting, I would like to fuck up about it knows what to talk to you, hell knows what purpose and hell knows how, and it’s unclear nichren when. „
I would like to emphasize the main idea a hundred times: think more about it and ask yourself one time each time before pressing the hotkey to send a letter - “WHAT IS YOUR LETTER USEFUL?” The answer to this question should be compared with the spoken vector that leads you to your ultimate goal , for the sake of which the fingers moved along the keyboard, while you need to draw the spoken vector of your opponent with a dotted line, and the more different the degrees of your vectors are, the longer you need to think through the facts of your letter. In 90% of cases, a letter can be made only one and a half times longer, but ten or even a hundred times more efficient.
The first letter should give comprehensive information. You have to work for yourself and for that guy. To figure out how this deal will be useful to him personally? How is she useful to his company? And what exactly will his department get? How to extract the maximum benefit from this, while closing all the goals of your company? As a rule, if your product is really good, there is a benefit by default there, and it’s just silly not to get involved in a deal.
You want to talk, not with stupid questions, but to talk about partnership? Well, and describe everything you need to know in order to discuss this partnership. Do not force a person to write you stupid questions. There is a high probability that, on the other end of the line, it’s not a hired slave who is sitting, but Mr. businessman, his need to ask you stupid questions is especially annoying.
How to knock on the door to strangers? It is hardly enough to just knock, and shout at the top of your mouth: "This is Vasya, open it." At best, you will be answered: “What Vasya?”. So with a welcoming letter of sale. In general, I will even prepare for you a universal checklist:
- Normal human communication in the beginning, middle and end of the letter. If this is not interesting to you, and you constantly think about how to save time, please leave the sale.
- Detailed (one paragraph) description of the company + any numbers that you are proud of.
- Description of the idea (even if it is simple and typical) of the partnership.
- Your opinion on how many units of profit the parties should receive if the transaction takes place.
- Enumeration of everything you can give, with a detailed description of the value of each element of the transaction, as well as an indication of the performance parameters of each element. If in a simple way: “We can do this, and it ALREADY works so cool with such guys, but by the way, there are so many.”
- When the subject of the transaction is fully described from all sides, immediately position the importance of the transaction. Something like “We can blow up your distribution, we have everything for it, and we really can't wait to start.”
- A good signature with all channels of communication, and without any extra stupid nonsense.
Have written a letter? Check by checklist. All OK? Send, fasten belts, enjoy the incoming flow of letters.
Any channel is the most effective. Just think what and why you are writing. And the last - if your pitch is in order, but you have not been answered - ping. Enough tolerating this! Ping is not one, not two, not three times. Ping a hundred times. You will be surprised by the percentage of transactions that it is quite realistic to conclude stupidly with your fingers and keyboard.
And, of course, I am categorical in some places. You know good managers to whom all this is undoubtedly not applicable. Not all the managers we have to work with are complete mudlanavts. Total about 80%. Which is better - 20% of deals or 100%?
Pease
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/224789/
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