3 Tips to Help You Warm Up Your Outreach  

There are a number of reasons to dread sending a cold email. As the name implies, it can be impersonal and awkward, and for those of us who have stress dreams about wasting other people’s time, it can feel painfully self-serving and obnoxious. At the basest level, you’re introducing yourself to someone with the sole intention of getting something from him or her, and you’re offering something he or she didn’t ask for in return.

Still, cold outreach is a necessary evil in a world where people connect primarily through technology. Journalists utilize it to gain information and reputable contacts, salespeople use it to build up potential clients when leads are slow, and avid networkers use cold outreach as an opportunity to make connections that could be helpful in the future. Even if you personally despise cold outreach, chances are you’ll have to do it at least once, especially if you’re in a sales or business development role.

The good news is that when relationships are the top priority, cold outreach doesn’t have to be impersonal, obnoxious, or one-sided. The awkwardness doesn’t go away, but the more you practice good outreach habits, the more likely people are to look past it and appreciate what you have to offer. Here are a few tips for warming up your cold outreach:

Be genuine 

There’s no quicker way to waste someone else’s time (and your own) than to slap together a generic, one-size-fits-all email and send it to everyone you can find. Though this method may be the fastest way to reach out to a large number of people, it lacks the personal touch that’s vital to gain people’s interest and trust. According to a study done by Fast Company, a sample of 10 different thoughtful emails with no personal connection garnered only a 1.7% response rate. You can imagine the results from an email that’s both impersonal and sloppy.

Even if you have to meet a quota, take time to become familiar with the people you’re reaching out to. Find articles they’ve written, videos they’ve made, or other pieces of content that you can reference. Be familiar enough with the content to give a meaningful compliment or recap something useful that you learned. For example:

Hi Johnny, 

I hope this message finds you well! I came across an article you wrote for Forbes on the challenges of influencer marketing, and I appreciated your point about maintaining authenticity in a skeptical culture.

If you’re reaching out based on a person’s interaction with your company’s website, acknowledge that you’re reaching out because of that interaction, and move quickly to addressing the pain points that person might be facing.

Hi Johnny, 

I hope your week is going well! I’m reaching out because you indicated that you’d be interested in learning more about our company’s personal branding services. 

Building a personal brand can be an asset to a business, but it can also be an overwhelming task. I’d love to schedule a quick call to explore what you’re working on and how our consultants could help. 

No matter the catalyst for your outreach, make sure you have an idea of who the person is and why what you offer would be of value to them.

Be flexible 

For better or for worse, people won’t always give you a clear response after outreach. Often, the answer is “Maybe,” or “Later,” or “Could you tell me more before we set up a call?” If you are working off a rigid script and someone veers from that script, you’re bound to dampen the connection if you try to steer them back to your plan for the conversation.

When you’re preparing for outreach, imagine a few different scenarios for what might happen. “Ready for a call,” “Interested but need more info,” and “Not now, but maybe later,” could be categories, and tools like Contactually can help you divide your outreach targets into buckets for follow-up emails.

Compile useful materials to send in each different situation, and keep track of content that could be of interest to the people you’ve reached out to in the past. Most importantly, listen to what people say, and answer their questions to the best of your ability. If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t pretend you do. Assure your outreach contact that you’ll find out from someone who does know, and that you’ll follow up soon. (And when you say you’re going to follow up, make sure you do it.)

Be ready for rejection 

One of the biggest hurdles for people with cold outreach anxiety is the feeling of rejection, or that they’ve intruded in someone’s life and yielded negative results from it.

Though it goes without saying, people are busy. If you’re reaching out to someone who has little or no connection to you, there’s a decent chance that your message will receive a glance and then be forgotten or go immediately in the trash, even with your best efforts at personalization. There’s also a chance that someone will open and read your email, and maybe even respond a few times, then decide that he or she is not interested in what you have to offer.

The keys to handling rejection are to not take it personally (How often do you reject people?) and to see it as an opportunity. Did the contact give a reason why he or she lost interest? Make note, and see if there’s something about your offering that you have the power to change. If you can’t control what you’re offering, or if what the person is looking for clashes with your goals, accept that it’s not a good fit and move on. But be sure to end these conversations by thanking the individuals for their time and an offer to keep in touch; doing so opens up possibilities for them to come back, or for them to recommend you to their connections.

If you take a genuine interest in the people you’re reaching out to and tailor the conversation to meet their needs, the number of positive responses will increase and your feeling of cold outreach dread will wear off.  And you might even begin to look forward to it!