Think Of It As Having a Cup of Coffee With a New Friend

I think we can all cold sales messages in your DMs are pretty annoying.

I received one on LinkedIn a few months ago that included both the remark: “I checked out your profile” and “I can see you are a woman of colour with a passion for entrepreneurship.” Clearly, both those statements are false, because had they looked at my profile, they would have easily seen that I am not in fact a woman of colour. It was either extremely careless or a poorly programmed bot, but either way it didn’t make me feel in any way inclined to have a conversation with this person.

This is often the case with cold sales messages. They are not connected to anything. You are breaking into people’s personal space and you had better be respectful of that.

Sales messages only work when you have a clear understanding of the recipient’s needs or challenges and whether they align with the services you provide. Even when you feel you can read between the lines of someone’s profile or content, they don’t know you or what you. So, so why should they trust you?

Are you used to sending cold sales messages and would like to know more about warming them up a little? Well, it’s simple! Get back to human connection.

Engage with content, send a message that relates to a post they shared, and invite them to a conversation. Build trust, and learn more about them. Doing business is about building relationships so drop the tinder attitude and instead think of it as having a cup of coffee with a new friend.

Originally published at https://www.houseofhives.com on March 13, 2023.