Creativity and out of the box thinking

Give (and get) Advice
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I’m curious to hear how others here find creative ideas to do new things when your usual playbook isn’t showing results. How do you go about it and what’s worked for you in the past?

One of the things I like to do is reach out to friends and former colleagues for a quick chat to pick their brain on what’s been working for them. Usually I find that you end up at least with two or three concrete ideas that you didn’t think about that you can test out. Bonus is you get to catch up with old friends.

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@halit I once looked through my Sent box at emails that never got replies, and did it through the POV of the specific recipient. I sorta asked myself what the best case scenario reply would be, and if I had crafted the message in a way that the person would ever actually get to that ideal reply.

That brought about some flaws I hadn’t noticed. I’d focused so much on “get the meeting, get the meeting” that I hadn’t touched on them as a person or their specific pain points.

Made big adjustments from that exercise, and I will say that during my next round of responses that I got back, there was more substance to what the recipients were replying to - not just a meeting yes/no, but they’d give me direct replies to additional questions I had asked, or observations that I made that showed I had researched them and knew what they needed.

That’s my creative solution. Look through your sent box. Are you putting yourself in the position to get the replies you actually want, and the information you hope to discover. Or are you too focused on the objective of meetings, meetings, meeting?

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Hello @halit,

Shameless plug…I am hosting a virtual roundtable on Sept 7th and will touch on the subject you raised.

I like what @tim.hartwell shared regarding focus and intent. In a way I kind of blame the world we are in where instant gratification is the norm.

From a prospecting perspective, it is a lot like fishing. Sure you can probably toss a stick of dynamite in the lake and pull something out, but what other damage did you cause. prospecting is a process and the keys to success is persistence, self-awareness, and patience.

From a sales cycle perspective, continuing with the fishing analogy, you have to set the hook in the fish’s mouth in order to reel it in. In sales terminology, you have to get your prospect to lean in, extract as much pain as possible and then expose the risk of not doing anything. At the same time building a legit champion who can help you (remember one attribute of a champion is that they have a personal gain by bringing you in).

My (not so) creative way to answer your question is to invest time in identify potential champion then build an army of champions. Magic will happen.

As you will learn in my (shameless plug) roundtable on Sept 7th, as you research your target…creative ideas will come up…the question is…are you willing to take a risk.

I shared a story regarding one of my reps who secured a meeting by sending a velvet hammer to the CIO.

Another tip…

Are you doing the same thing the hundreds of thousands of sellers and BDR/SDRs are doing out there? Challenge yourself to be different. What is going to make you stand out.

Saying you will save them 30% in X by using your product is not standing out and everyone says basically the same thing.

Think about how you engage with someone you do not know when you are out in a bar, club, social event, etc.

We are dealing with people.

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Thanks Tim, I think that’s really helpful feedback! Taking a step back and putting yourself in the shoes of the recipient is certainly something we should do in general, but important to remind yourself every now and then again. We should think about “what’s in it for me” from a recipient perspective. What will they get out of engaging with us (e.g. will they learn something valuable, will it help them solve a problem, etc.). What’s the value they will receive from our email is always something we should keep in mind.

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@greg.nishihira That’s such a good point you make about standing out and differentiating yourself from everybody else. As you say being one of 100 people saying how you increase X by Y% doesn’t allow you to do that.

You have to be relevant and provide value. Understanding your prospect’s role and their company’s strategic priorities is a great first start, but it takes more than that. We need to give them a reason to want to engage and that needs to ideally directly tie into how they can benefit from it (e.g. achieve their goals/objectives, help them save time, make them successful in their current role/help them get promoted, etc.).

The velvet hammer is a great example for something that will immediately help you stand out. I’ve had team members send handwritten notes to their prospects with well researched and specific reasons on why we were reaching out to them specifically and how we could help them achieve their goals. In another case a team member hand-delivered the notes including some yummy cupcakes to a few prospects that worked in NYC. They were able to share those with their team members, it made and impression and helped him stand out and secure a few follow-up meetings from it.

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