In today’s modern market, shooting off a cold email or dialing up a cold lead is far more complex than a simple and generic message or spiel. With so many competing products and services, recipients’ inboxes and voicemails are often overflowing with hundreds of other messages from other salespeople.
In order to grab their attention, sales reps must take special care during cold outreach to ensure that their messaging resonates with the prospect. Steering away from those generic mass outreach tactics and opting for a more personalized and intentional approach can significantly increase your ability to receive a response, build trust, and ultimately close more deals.
Cold outreach refers to the first touchpoint between seller and prospect, initiated by the salesperson. In this scenario, the seller must quickly appeal to the prospect's needs and convince them that their product is worth the prospect’s time.
Cold calls occur when salespeople pick up the phone and dial-up individuals or organizations that haven’t explicitly expressed interest in their product before. In these calls, salespeople establish contact, gather as much information about the prospect as they can, and briefly pitch their product.
Cold emails are, essentially, the web version of a cold call. It’s important to remember that not all emails are created equal; because we get so many emails, we will only read the ones that truly appeal to us.
When sales reps utilize platforms like LinkedIn to reach out to cold leads and introduce themselves and their product, they are cold social messaging. Due to how active people are on social media, cold social messaging can be very effective if done correctly.
Cold outreach can be frustrating, futile, and even intimidating at times. While some salespeople are born sellers, others might require dedicated time, training, and practice to meet their goals. Regardless of your skill in selling, cold calling and cold email outreach tools can greatly enhance your outreach strategies, better differentiate from competitors, and improve response rates. With so many sellers, products, and directions to consider, utilizing outreach tools can set you ahead and apart from the competition while combating some very common outreach-related issues.
To increase efficiency in cold outreach, it’s essential first to address the issues related to its success. We’ve identified two major (and common!) problems that salespeople face:
With the rise of online communication, sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, etc., have made it much easier to reach out to people. But this ease also creates a major problem: over-saturation. As people grow more and more overwhelmed by the sheer amount of messages they receive, they become more likely to ignore the information they deem insignificant. To receive a response, salespeople must stand out from the crowd and grab the attention of their prospects.
We all tend to assume that everyone else wants to communicate the same way we do– but that couldn’t be further from the truth. People have very diverse backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs that contribute to how they communicate and respond to information. A generalized approach could greatly impact your ability to be heard by others– while some people may appreciate thorough and detailed information with plenty of data, others might be bored to tears and prefer a more casual and personable approach.
Because people have very different backgrounds, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and communication preferences. It can be nearly impossible to communicate (and sell!) effectively without considering how the individual receives and responds to information. Rather than interacting with someone in the way WE want, we need to learn to communicate the way THEY want. To improve cold outreach, salespeople must be mindful of where prospects are in their buying journey rather than where they are in their sales process and prioritize more empathetic and personalized communication.
…. This is where Personality AI comes into play.
Personality AI analyzes publicly available information on websites like LinkedIn to predict someone’s personality using artificial intelligence and machine learning. We built our product, Crystal, to harness Personality AI and enable anyone to identify personalities online to improve their communication, personalize their sales outreach, increase response rates, and build stronger relationships.
With an ever-improving personality analysis algorithm, Crystal is able to predict personality with approximately 80% accuracy. We wrote about this in detail in another ebook titled, Personality AI (which you can download for free).
When Crystal’s AI predicts personality, it uses a proven and tested framework called DISC to classify personalities into a few categories that we refer to as D (dominance), I (influence), S (steadiness), and C (conscientiousness). By identifying someone’s personality type, we can learn how to best communicate with them, especially during cold outreach.
For example, someone who is a warm, people-oriented Supporter (S) is less likely to engage in a discussion about facts and data. They’d usually prefer to engage in a more personal, get-to-know-you conversation. On the other hand, an Analyst (C) tends to enjoy learning more about specific, concrete information. When you adjust your communication style to best suit the intended audience, you can interact in a way that best resonates with them and facilitates a productive conversation.
Using Personality AI to facilitate empathetic communication with prospects is our secret sauce for selling; by making empathy your secret sauce, you can better distinguish yourself and cut through the noise. For example, are you more likely to respond to an email from someone who has taken the time to understand who you are, what you want, why you might want it, and how you like to communicate? Or, are you more likely to respond to a generic, mass email? When most messages are lifeless, impersonal templates, empathy is a powerful force for differentiation.
By downloading the Crystal Chrome Extension, users have the ability to easily predict anyone’s personality and easily practice empathy in their outreach. With Personality AI, users can gain valuable insights for effectively tailoring their cold outreach, such as crafting the perfect email, scheduling meetings, and making a good first impression.
Learn more about our Chrome Extension in our full-length ebook here.
When cold calling or emailing, it’s important to consider the following three questions:
What do they want?
Why do they want it?
How do they want to interact?
By thinking in this way, you’re setting yourself up for effective, empathetic communication.
D types are results-oriented people who are likely to feel interested in something that will make them even more effective. However, they will grow bored when messages are too long and detailed. If you show that you are confident in what you have to offer, you're more likely to win them over.
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I types love creative stories. If you can get them daydreaming about your product, they'll sell themselves on it. They want to like what you're offering because they're naturally optimistic. If you focus on working with that excitement, you'll be much more successful.
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S types are very people-oriented. They'll connect with you by hearing a bit more about who you are and engaging in casual conversation first. This is one of the most important parts of the pitch because they need to trust you before they'll trust in your solution. The key to selling to S types is to slowly build lasting trust over time.
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C-types value objective, detailed, and formal communication. Be prepared with lots of facts and data to support your claims, be sure to explain how your product can solve a problem they face, and address any of their concerns in a thorough and logical way. When you can show that you know what you're talking about and are confident enough in your product's effectiveness to comfortably debate it, you'll sway them toward the sale.
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Personality plays a vital role in how people receive and respond to information and communication. These differences are extremely important to understand for your cold outreach approach and in every conversation with a prospect. By identifying someone’s personality type, we can learn how to best communicate with them, especially when cold calling or emailing. By utilizing cold outreach tools like Personality AI, salespeople can easily understand these differences and improve outreach strategies.
The most noteworthy benefit of a technology like Personality AI is more effective communication and the ability to cut through the noise of today’s high volume of communication– which continues to be the #1 challenge for salespeople.
Personality AI ultimately helps us communicate in a deeply personalized way by recognizing everyone’s unique differences. With this insightful tool, you can quickly understand someone’s behavior, motivations, and communication style. You can then use that information to communicate more effectively, write more persuasively, and build trust faster. Using the insights gathered, you can understand anyone’s personality and learn to break through the noise and resonate with anyone during cold outreach.
Speak with a Crystal Rep for a guided demo of Crystal for sales today.