Inbound, Outbound, and In Between

Blair has been getting too much spam lately and sees an opportunity with warm leads that lies between inbound and outbound marketing which is not being mined well among the creative firms.

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“Inbound, Outbound & In Between” article on WinWithoutPitching.com

Transcript

David C. Baker: Okay. Normally, I would open this-- You said you've got a way to open this? Go ahead.

Blair Enns: [laughs] Yes. In my latest post called inbound, outbound, and in-between, I've used you to build the strawman argument, on what I thought was your legitimate and totally incorrect position on the use of outbound in a lead generation plan.

David: When I read it, it's like, "What?

Blair: You read it, "What the F, are you tal-- How dare you put words in my mouth?" I had to call you and eat crow, and we made up and it's all good. We're still doing this podcast anyway.

David: At least this episode. We'll see.

Blair: Yes, I'm on probation. I understand. Okay. The topic is inbound, outbound, and in between. Everybody knows what inbound, everybody knows what outbound is, but the in between, I think, as I understand this anyway, you're saying, listen there is this is middle ground where outbound isn't always evil. There are exceptions or times when an expert doesn't just sit back and wait for people, their signals. That's the message, that, "There's room for this in certain times, certain places." That's what you're saying?

David: Yes, I think so. Lead Generation used to be a sales function. It used to be almost entirely outbound, and then along comes the internet and internet search, and clients start to do more investigative work online first. You've got to put your bona fides out there, you've got to put your thinking out there, let them sort through it and decide to reach out to you. The place that any expert firm wants to get to is this place where our business is all in bound all the time. One of the things, not just this text that you and I had going back and forth with a couple of friends, but another impetus for this topic is, "I'm getting a shitload of spam these days."

The spam follows a lot of what I consider to be the actually pretty good guidance on how to do this, on how to do outbound properly, but it's still spam. It begs the question, should experts even be in the outbound lead generation business, cold outreach? I have an opinion on that. You and I both agree-- We probably agree on almost everything, but you and I both agree that the place our listeners want to get to is the place where the vast majority of leads are coming to them.

Blair: Right.

David: I still think we have a window, where it's appropriate for experts of any kind, not just creative firms, but expertise-based businesses, to reach out if they do it properly. The real opportunity, as you've alluded to, I think is the in-between.

Blair: Right.

David: Because we're used to thinking of, "Okay, somebody that we don't want to talk to is smiling and dialing, reaching out just blindly. Nobody cares about the fit and all that and just annoys you." Then the opposite is the other extreme where you're sitting back, people are reaching out to you, and you never need to do that. It's just a simplified view that there is something in the middle. That's what you're saying. Let's start by looking at the tiers. I actually love this kind of the tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, when I'm working with a client on the Lead Gen phase of my engagement with them, I borrow your ladder, image.

Blair: Ladder of lead generation, yes. Which is slightly different to this, but overlaps.

David: It is, right, but I'll say, "Listen, you don't have to have an email list." The ideal marketing plan is you write a fantastic book every three years, and you have this TED Talk that goes viral. That's all you ever need to do.

Blair: Simple.

David: Yes. Just get to work, buddy, but it's not accessible to all of us, to any of us really. Not to me, not to you even, so we have to do something different. Now, that's the ladder of lead generation. You're talking about something different here. You're organizing this in different tiers, so walk us through that.

Blair: Yes. You think of three tiers with tier 1 at the top, like a gold medalist on a podium. Tier 2 in the middle would be your silver tier, and tier 3 at the bottom, or the bronze tier. The place we want to get to is tier 1. Tier 1 is just inbound. It's where all leads come to you and they're driven to you effectively by your reputation, referrals, the accolades you get in the press, maybe actually awards. A big percentage of those inbound leads for the typical firm listening, is through your paid marketing or your content marketing.

In the ladder of lead generation, that other model that you referenced for, thinking about leads, and make the distinction-- I actually have on different ranks, paid marketing versus content marketing. For this purpose, we just treat them all inbound leads, regardless of the originating source as tier one. This is gold. We all understand it's gold. This is what we all want to get to.

David: Right, but it's a little bit out of reach right now.

Blair: Yes.

David: Tier two leads are?

Blair: Tier two leads, this is where almost all of us have to drop down. If we can build a business of tier one leads, great, but most of us can't, so we have to drop down to the second tier. You think of it as the silver tier. In the post I made the note that in sports there's a saying, you don't win silver, you lose gold. That's why the bronze medalist always looks happier on the podium than the silver medalist because they feel like they lost gold. I feel like there's gold in this silver tier.

Tier two leads are those prospective clients who are engaging with your content, who are demonstrating through their behavior that they know who you are, they know what they do. There is an implied level of interest in possibly engaging you, or at least an implied level of interest in the content that you're putting out there. The way I think about tier two leads is, this is warm outreach. This is the part of outreach. It's really the in-between between inbound and outbound. This warm outreach to people who are already engaging in your content, this is probably the biggest opportunity that is not being mined well among the firms listening to this.

David: I just want to restate something slightly different just to see if this passes your approval. This isn't explicit approval where a prospect has raised their hand and said. "Hey, I'm opening the door. I'm giving you permission to sell to me." It's not that. It's more implicit permission based on either where they are, some signal, some trigger, some activity. Where does this come from? If they haven't given you explicit information, then where's the implicit coming from?

Blair: It's not implicit permission to sell to them and that's where we need to be careful. It's implied interest. We have to be careful in how we reach out. It begs the question, okay, somebody's active on your website and to do this properly, you have to properly define where the line is. I think one page view on your website is not an invitation for you to reach out. You're not going to go to hell.

David: If you do it three times in a row, you're going to hell. I'll tell you that.

Blair: There are worse lead generation crimes you could commit, but I've seen firms just jump on and we've all been victims of this. You hit one page on one website and all of a sudden you're hearing from a salesperson. That's not what I'm advocating here. You need to sift through the data on your website. You need to make some discerning decision around what constitutes meaningful behavior on your website. We could talk about some examples of that, but I don't have any stringent guidance on this. Use your judgment.

There are certain pages on your website where if somebody hits and hits them in order-- I don't like the idea of putting pricing on your website, but I like the idea of having a pricing page that's only linked to from the About Us or Services page. If somebody goes from services to pricing, that to me is a level of interest. My general guidance is that you would just have general guidance on pricing on the website rather than pricing your services.

David: Let me throw kind of a wrench in this. Your talk about the website makes me think about this. When I see the call to action on most firm's websites, most of the people listening to this, there's one call to action and that's fill out a form, we'll begin a conversation with you. I've always felt like that still needs to be on there, but there ought to be more, "Hey, I'm not ready to buy, but I'd really love to stay in touch with you and keep getting your stuff." I don't want to have to keep coming to your website to get you posting it here. I'd like to get an email, but that's not a signal to sell to me. If somebody signs up for that secondary one, surely there's some activity that we can track at that point that gives us a little bit of a clue about how interested they might be?

Blair: Yes. The general understanding among all parties is once they convert on your website, once they hand over their email address, they're now cookied and you have visibility into what they're doing on your website. If their level of activity, or type of activity on your website hits a certain point and it triggers the need for some outreach, then go ahead and reach out.

One of the first questions that come up when I have this conversation is, "Well, do I reference what they're doing on the website, or do I ignore it?" My preference is you don't reference it because we all understand how this works. Everybody understands that you have a view into what your prospects are doing on your website. I think the outreach just sounds like an introduction, without referencing what they're doing on your website. Now, that's not a strongly held point of view. I think there are lots of ways you can do this warm outreach, you just have to be professional and you don't go into convince or sales mode.

David: They've not given you permission to sell. You corrected me there. This is more a level of implied interest. Can you phrase how you might approach somebody like that with the specific words? I think when you and Shannon and so on get into the modeling conversations, it's like people's eyes open up and they say, now I see how I might say that in a way that reflects the approach that doesn't send their walls up right away.

Blair: Let's do an example where you are referencing their behavior on your website. You might say, "Hey, I see you're interested in a case study of some of the work that we did for one of your competitors. Are you interested in having a conversation about how we might help you with this similar challenge?" I think in this type of outreach, even if you're doing cold outreach, I'm a big fan of a succinct email that ends with a closed-ended question to which they can answer yes or no.

It's really about their interest. It's not, do you want to hop on a call? Can we schedule a call? Et cetera. It's, are you interested in pursuing this further? Are you interested in talking about the possibility of us helping you? That question they can answer yes or no to, meaning you increase the likelihood that you will get a response.

David: Is this an individually crafted email or is this an automation?

Blair: Well, this is where this stuff goes wrong, not just tier 2 outreach, but obviously tier 3 outreach, and tier 3 leads are just a name on a list. It's just you have no behavioral information on whether or not these people are interacting with your content or even know who you are. It's just a name on a list. For this tier two outreach, you could automate these and you and I had a discussion where you and I both have automations running on our websites for products or productized services that we sell. That's appropriate for a product company or a productized service company but the vast majority of our listeners are customized services businesses.

I can't think of an automation that would feel right. In fact, I think the only automation that's appropriate for a fully customized service business or expertise-based business is a prompt to the salesperson, whoever's in charge of this warm outreach. To look at the lead, make an assessment, and then follow up on an individual basis. I made the point at the top that I'm getting pissed off at all this spam that's in my inbox. What's interesting about this spam is it's following a lot of these principles that I advocate, and with a closed-ended question, I get this follow-up, follow up, follow up on these emails.

Then finally they send me a takeaway email. We talk about the takeaway email all the time. It's being used in this automated format. It drives me crazy that these tools are being used this way. I think that's where you cross the line when you start to automate these things. Again, the distinction is in a productized service business, automation like this makes sense because you can speak to somebody's specific demonstrated interest in a product of yours. It's pretty easy and I think appropriate to craft an automation, an email that's generated automatically when certain triggers are hit in that case. I don't think it applies in a more fully customized business.

David: You've modeled how you might say this if there's specific activity. How would you model at the introduction to the conversation if you're not going to reference that, if you just feel like, I don't see a specific trigger here, but it feels like it might fit. How do I say that?

Blair: I recommend you just treat this as a cold lead, knowing that it's not cold. You introduce yourself and the firm with the assumption that they don't know who you are. It's a little bit of a game, I don't think it's being disingenuous. You recognize that this person knows who we are and they have at least some interest based on their behavior on our website. You send what I see as an appropriate email that you would even send to a tier 3 lead, a cold lead, which is basically, "Hi, I'm so-and-so. I'm the principal of this firm. We specialize in," whatever your specialism is.

Then you might support that a little bit by declaring even narrower expertise in whatever content the prospect or the lead was engaging in on your website. We have a particular expertise in whatever the subject matter is. Then you follow up with this similar close-ended question, and a offer to help. "Feel free to say no if you don't see a fit, or there's no interest in your part, but would you want to have a conversation about how we might be able to help you in this area?" Means like we do experienced marketing and we have a particular focus in sporting events and I see that-- Anyway, you may not refer to, they looked at it.

David: Yes. You could add that line. I see that you're interested in, or you could just not add it at all. Whatever you're most comfortable with and then proceed.

Blair: Then just even in the language I just modeled, I prefaced it with feel free to say no, which I'm a big fan of, but allow me to ask. Is the other implied part of it, do you want to have a conversation?

David: Whenever I get a text from you that says, "Feel free to say no, I know what's coming is big ask."

Blair: You don't even read the rest of it. You just go all caps. No.

David: No. [chuckles] There's something buried in here that I want to make sure we don't lose and that's the crime of neglect. It just flips us around a little bit. If you've got all hesitancy.

Blair: Yes, I think when it comes to the marketing automation tools, our whole tech stack. From the website CMS to the CRM, to whatever marketing automation tool or email client you're using. We can get a little over enamored with the technology and we can fall in love with automation, and we can spend too much time looking at the data and playing with the bright shiny thing. At the other end of the spectrum, you have these tools. You have the visibility into who's doing what on your website if you've got a way for them to convert on your website.

Even if not, you can often see the domain. You can extrapolate from that, make some assumptions about who these people might be. The crime is to just ignore that data. Some firms are really good at staffing that, identifying a role or assigning the responsibility to mine this data. Those who are really good at it, I think they listen to this and think, well, doesn't everybody do this? Doesn't every smart marketer do this? They might be surprised at the number of firms who just not completely neglect this, but do not spend enough time and attention.

David: It's like a pharma company that tries all these new products and a lot of them just don't work or they're too dangerous or whatever. Then they land on one that really works and they stop the test early, because it's unethical to not make this available to people that are suffering from this disease. It's like we are so apologetic about our expertise and about our approach in a sales call, but you almost have to flip that around a little bit and say, "By God, it's like, if I don't tell you about what I can do for you, that is just a crime." Now, you never really say it that way. That is so not who I am.

Blair: That is not who I am, right? If you don't hear how incredible I am, you are going to suffer. Your world will be poor for it.

David: If I ever have to go dating again, this is how I'm going to do it.

Blair: [laughs] I'm going to buy tickets to that.

David: I don't mean it quite that way, but I do feel like there is a crime in here where it's not just opportunity that's on mind. It's like you can help these people.

Blair: Yes.

David: That's what I was trying to get to.

Blair: Then the other crime is the over automation of this. You take that introduction format that I just discussed and you drop that into your marketing automation tool and you hit your list. In the post, I gave an example of a piece of spam I've received recently where it's like, "I stole the idea from you. I have a fake university on my LinkedIn profile." There's to me interesting story about why I chose this university. I get this piece of email, it's like, "University name pride." Well, this thing doesn't exist. "Hey, Gray. I see you went to Doggerland University, great school. I hope things are great at Win Without Pitching." "Hey, if I could make 2023 a year of mad success, would you be interested?"

My friend Scott Edinger has this great line. He says, "Salespeople use a variation of it all the time." If I could show you something interesting, would you be interested? It's like, "Yes, I would." It's just the stupidest email. It's like you can see, okay, they've scraped my LinkedIn profile, they've grabbed these different fields. The idea is there, you can automate this to some level of success and know that 90% of the people, maybe it's 99.9, whatever the open rates are, let alone response rates. Majority are just going to delete or even mark it as spam. It's like that telemarketer, every once in a while you're going to get the 85-year-old lonely widow at home and they might buy something. The challenge is this is not the domain of an expert firm. The spam I'm getting is from marketing firms.

David: That's crazy, and then the second one is always, I'm sure you haven't had time to respond or you missed this. It's like, "What? No, the signal is I have zero interest in this. That's the signal you should get."

Blair: I've taught these techniques over the years and I feel like some of the people I've taught have just taken them and dumped them into a marketing automation program. There are probably a few million pieces of spam in the world that I'm indirectly responsible for.

It's part of the reason why I cringe so badly, because the approach of they're on your website, go to the LinkedIn profile, learn a little bit about them. Don't manufacture a reason to reach out, but it's like, "Hey, you and I know the same person. You and I went to the same school." Whatever. I see you have some interest in what we do. Would you like to have a conversation? No, is fine, but let me know." The handcrafted version of that is perfectly appropriate, so it drives me crazy to see it automated.

David: Tier 1 leads are inbound. This is the holy grail. This is sweet, where we just sit back and all this money pours in. The tier 3 is the cold outreach and we don't do much of that. We want to skip it as much as we can. You learn from those conversations where it's no, there is some room for that. Then there's middle, that's what you're really talking about. This tier 2 stuff which is warm outreach based on signals where you're not the used car salesman looking at meat that walks across the threshold. That's the whole point of this. Spam is always bad. Wrap this up for us.

Blair: I think you just did.

David: What did I miss? What did we not talk about?

Blair: What we didn't talk about is the trend so I'll just add a little bit to that. The tier 3 leads, I think tier 3 cold outreach can be done appropriately as long as it's not automated. I think you'll be able to do this for a while. I wonder if there isn't a point in time in the not too distant future where cold outreach via email will be as dead as outbound telephone solicitation is today. We have a generation of people, and you would assume all the generations that come after that just do not answer the phone. They certainly don't answer the phone from a number that they don't recognize.

I think we're going to see AI driven spam over the next few years look a lot like personal handcrafted spam. I don't think the net result is going to be good for anybody. I think open rates and response rates will keep going down even faster. I think we'll get to this equivalent of the place where people don't answer their telephones, I think will create a generation of people who just do not respond to any inbound solicitation from somebody that they do not know. It'll get to effectively zero and the medium will become useless.

David: Here's where we'll go then, we will go all the way back to a handwritten personal piece of mail on a beautifully thick printed something or other.

Blair: We should go there now.

David: Then mail it, and it takes five days to get there and nobody ignores it. Once we wear out one medium, we go back and we reuse them, we go back to the oldest one. Then if that doesn't work-- like I grew up sending telegrams for $0.3 a word to people, that'll be next.

Blair: How old are you?

[laughter]

David: We're going to end on that.

Blair: Your point about going back to the handwritten, you can automate that and that's where direct mail came from originally. Then faking the personalization in direct mail. That point of handcrafted one-to-one communication in any medium will always work. That is the domain of a highly specialized firm who has a very definable target market and they can identify a small number of leads to whom it makes sense to invest that much time, attention, and money. That's perfectly appropriate in any medium.

David: Thank you Blair.

Blair: Thanks David.