10 Effective Account Non-Entry Strategies

The beginning of every fiscal quarter is the green light for mass-email assaults of unsuspecting digital prospects. For many businesses using marketing automation tools, this tactic serves as their account entry strategy.  It’s more of an account non-entry strategy if you ask me. For those businesses and sales people who rely on spewing email messages to the masses, hoping for some return on their investment, know that I will hit the “Delete” button without reading your message if:

1. I don’t know you
2. I don’t have a professional relationship with you (being a friend of a friend doesn’t count)
3. I’m not connected to you on LinkedIn (and I won’t connect with you on LinkedIn if I don’t know you and you have not taken the time to develop a professional relationship with me)
4. You are using generic, one-size-fits-all messaging (I find it particularly weird when custom manufacturers send out mass email barrages into the un-targeted marketplace)
5. It’s obvious you have no idea about what I do and what my company does
6. In spite of all of the above, you are using a familiar and conversational tone like you spent last Thanksgiving with my family (which, rest assured, you did not)
7. You not only are using my non-company email address (obviously purchased from a list) but also are using my LinkedIn Inbox (obviously culled from one of your unsuspecting “Connections”)
8. You keep sending me this stuff even after I’ve Safe Unsubscribed from your marketing automation service
9. Your company hasn’t established its brand and image via social media and valuable and shared content (all you ever tweet about is either jobs posted or a “buy this now” message)
10. You pursue your customers in nameless, faceless email barrage fashion, with an all-about-me focus rather than all-about-you-Ms. Customer mindset

Your account entry non-strategy, as a stand-alone selling option, is impersonal and unfeasible. There’s no sustainable return-on-investment when you don’t take the time to research your target customers and develop an understanding of what is relevant to them. One thing’s for sure, what’s relevant to your prospective customers certainly isn’t your quarterly email barrages. Come on. You are better than that, aren’t you?

Differentiate your company from the rest of the folks participating in this mass email strategy. Otherwise, you’ve got a pretty successful account non-entry strategy going for you.

The messages you are delivering, loud and clear, to prospective customers, are that you:

• don’t know how to enter into the competitive marketplace
• don’t want to take the time to understand your target customers’ businesses
•  are not willing to invest your time in developing sales mastery

Invest in learning about me. Then I’ll consider the relevance of making an investment in you. 

Babette N. Ten Haken, Founder & President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers, LLC, catalyzes revenue-producing business transition, startup growth and professional development, one millimeter at a time. She works with manufacturing and engineering firms and small business entrepreneurships. Download her newest White Paper at her Free Resources Page.