My guide to getting replies with cold messaging

In today’s newsletter, I’m going to share the exact steps you can follow to improve your messages and get more replies.

Writing clear cold messages (on LinkedIn or email) is essential if you want to get replies and book meetings. You’ll get the attention of your prospects, get them to read your message, and get replies as a result.

Unfortunately, most salespeople are struggling to write compelling copy. They understand their prospects’ problems, but they cannot communicate about them efficiently.

Their copy sucks because they follow cookie-cutter templates

We’ve all used them at some point. And these templates do not work because:

• They are way too long

• Everyone is using them

• They are plain and boring

• They are product and feature centric

But don’t worry. There are 4 simple steps you can follow to create your own templates and get more replies.

Here’s how, step by step:

Step 1: Find a big problem

If you can’t find a big problem, you won’t be able to start meaningful conversations with your prospects.

The big problem is the main issue your solution is solving for your customers. For example, my customers (VPs of Sales) have issues getting their teams to generate outbound pipeline consistently. They are fed with cushy inbound leads, and when times are tough, they starve because marketing budgets are down.

There can be more than one big problem you solve. Build a list of these problems and be as descriptive as possible.

Step 2: List precise symptoms

Having a big problem is often not enough. You may find that your problem is too vague to resonate with your prospects.

A good way to solve that is to list visible symptoms of the problem, just like a doctor would do. In the example of my VPs of Sales having issues getting their teams to generate outbound pipeline consistently, here are obvious symptoms:

• SDRs are not reaching their activity metrics

• AEs are complaining about having to prospect

• SDRs rely heavily on automation

• SDRs aren’t using the sales tools at their disposal

And I could go on forever. The idea is to create a list of visible symptoms of the big problem.

Step 3: Use these symptoms in your copy

Now that you know what the symptoms are, you can easily integrate these symptoms in your copy. Here’s an example of how I would integrate the examples above:

• How are you preventing your SDRs from not reaching their activity metrics?

• How do you deal with AEs complaining about having to prospect?

• How do you prevent SDRs from relying heavily on automation?

• How do you avoid SDRs not using the sales tools at their disposal?

As you can see, I always start with “How do you avoid/prevent” and give the symptom. It’s an easy way to show your understanding of your prospects’ problems.

Step 4: Tease a resource to sooth their symptoms

If you’ve done your job correctly, you should have the attention of your prospects. Now is the time to tease a resource to help sooth the symptom.

I wrote a blog post about this a few weeks ago, but here’s the summary:

1. Find a blog post/podcast from your marketing team

2. Find out what problem it solves for your prospects

3. Summarize your findings in a quick video

4. Add 2 call-to-actions

5. Pitch the resource in your sequence

Here’s how a cold message would look like with the VP of Sales example:

“Fred, noticed you recently liked the post of Mary about 10 innovative SDR metrics to track in 2022.

Quick one: How are you preventing your SDRs from not reaching their activity metrics?

If you’re interested, I have a quick resource to share on how you can help your SDRs build a simple prospecting routine.

Interested in grabbing it?”

And that’s my guide to getting replies with cold messaging.

TL;DR:

1. Find a big problem

2. List precise symptoms

3. Use these symptoms in your copy

4. Tease a resource to sooth their symptoms

And if you’re interested in grabbing my course on writing cold outreach that get you replies, you can pre-order it for €79 instead of €99.