In the last 6 months, the market has seen countless “personalized sales emails, at scale” sales tools come out. Honestly, there’s probably 100’s of them at this point!
These tools are unlikely to move the needle and only work in very limited situations! Here’s why 👇
If you manage to sell ice in Antarctica, you’re a good salesman but a terrible businessman. Sell it to rich tourists in the Sahara, or import heaters and stay in Antarctica! Or how about selling alternative energy sources when the oil price is at an all-time high?
The point is that sales should be about finding natural product demand and matching that demand to the supply you hold. Personalizing helps to stand out and be considered, but it does not increase the natural demand for whatever you’re selling.
It’s like a Maslow pyramid: at the bottom, as the base, there’s the problem. In the middle, there’s the demand for the solution, and just at the top is the marketing, with messaging and personalization.
What the personalization tools are trying to do is replace the whole pyramid with just the top part, the messaging. A sort of hybrid approach of personalization can indeed increase meeting conversion rates, so it might be a valid strategy for products with long sales cycles that require a lot of discovery.
But for most companies, it simply won’t move the needle of actual sales. You can’t replace a strong understanding of why a certain segment needs your product with personalization. It will drive high churn as all it does is optimize for a high response rate.
An argument could be made that we are looking at a future where every email needs to be personalized on top of being relevant, justifying the use of all these tools.
But won’t this become irrelevant when everyone is doing it “at scale” and are we not getting there very quickly? How about personalizing it from the roots, the problem space? It’s like shooting two birds with one stone: you are relevant and personalized in the same sentence.
The challenge of the problem space is that it’s complex, with many dynamics at play. The same B2B product at a company might be used by both the intern and the CEO, who are solving completely different problems with the same product.
But that’s a product nuance GTM teams can use when going to the market. Take no shortcuts and find all your product nuances, document them, and train the whole team on them.
When your message is relevant in all the elements – title, size, industry, and nuanced elements in your category – you’ll be spot on and relevant to your prospects. No need for personalization: you’re selling ice in the Sahara!