Chapter NineteenPERSONALITY AI FOR EMAIL OUTREACH
Professionals in sales, business development, recruiting, and other outreach-oriented roles have always been fighting an uphill battle for their prospects' attention, and technology has thrown a monkey wrench into the mix. As sales and marketing automation tools have proliferated and promised more efficiency, they have had the infuriating side effect of flooding buyers' inboxes with messages that sound more and more similar.
Kyle Porter, the CEO of SalesLoft, highlights this problem in a piece he wrote for Forbes:1
A mediocre sales organization is one that doesn't understand that an SDR is a crucial entry point to your company for a potential prospect. They're prioritizing output over results, feelings over data and doing as little thought as possible, ultimately treating a role that is incredibly important as interchangeable.
According to the research organization TOPO, it takes an average sales representative 18 calls to connect with one buyer, and four emails to get one recipient to even open one of them.2
I personally get inundated with dozens of requests every day, so I can only imagine the chaos that takes place in a larger company executive's inbox.
“Can we schedule 30 minutes this week …”
“Can you tell me who the right person to speak with on your team about …”
“Bumping this up to the top of your inbox in case you missed it!” (That's my favorite.)
Porter insists that this boilerplate, quantity-over-quality approach ...
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