#2: 5 Steps to Building Authentic Business Relationships

Last week, I shared with you why most lead gen sucks.

Summary of last email:

Everyone gets the same bad emails.
Outbound needs to focus on starting relationships.
Start a relationship by inviting them to something they want.

This week, I’m going to be sharing how to actually book meetings and build relationships through email, using our Decision Maker Engagement formula.

The Goal of Outbound = Start Relationships

This must be said:

You’re playing the long game here.

Why?

If you were selling a $30 trinket, yeah you don’t need a relationship.

If you’re selling a $30,000 offer, you can’t sell that in 1 email.

You need trust.
You need credibility.
You need meetings.

The long game of building authentic relationships is always appropriate, but you have to realize it takes time to build trust.

You will successfully start relationships with 10-20% of your target market this way.

Just last week, I used this approach to book meetings for one of the hardest industries to do lead gen for… software development.

But.

If you start a business relationship, never turn around and push a sales conversation on them something right away.

Never, never, ever do the bait-and-switch.

They will never talk to you again.

If they have a problem you can solve, offer a conversation.

Never push a sale. Always offer. Build demand.

Let’s begin.

Step 1: Figure out what people want

What you have to think about is… what is my ideal buyer likely to say yes to?

What do they want?

In general, everyone (including me) wants the same things: Money, time, status, and relationships.

In my experience of sending thousands of emails over this last year, pressing the status and relationships buttons work really well.

Examples:

Give status = opportunity to have content
Give status = opportunity to be interviewed
Give status = opportunity to share what they know
Give relationships = opportunity to join a community
Give relationships = opportunity to network

*example of a client using a blog article feature to get meetings. also, i’m bad at texts.*

Step 2: Package what they want into something you can give

Everything that’s attractive to someone to take part in takes time to build.

Here’s the difficulty ranking of everything you can leverage to build a relationship:

Step 3: Build a list of people who fit your Ideal Customer Profile

Luckily, there’s tons of tools today you can use to really target who you want to build relationships with.

My 2 recommendations:

LinkedIn Sales Navigator + LeadLeaper ($120/month)
Seamless.ai ($1500/year) (easiest)

Step 4: Craft a Compelling Email

Here’s the framework you use:

Hi (name),

(Good personalization)

(Why you’re reaching out / Invite to something they want)

(Credibility)

(Call to Action)

Step 5: Invite them to what they want

To invite them, you can:

Send emails manually through Gmail
Send emails through Mailshake ($59/month)
Send emails through Close CRM ($99/month)

Caution: It’s best to use a secondary email domain for this. For example, my outbound is through fireshowmedia.org, not fireshowmedia.com.

Hope this helps.

– Moby