Before we get into storytelling, a few, quick edits to last week’s post: Kelly ran EST (environmental, social, and technology innovation) for LaSalle, not ESG. The blood drives were held in common areas and ran nationwide after their start in Chicago.
This morning, I received yet another email from a startup sales rep. And guys, this was to my work email, which I’ve been using barely a month.
This salesperson emailed me a couple of weeks ago and has already sent me multiple follow-ups. I earmarked their first email intending to respond, but at this point… no way. I’m tempted to mark their email as spam: the scarlet mark preventing them from accessing future cold leads as email providers blacklist them.
Here’s the thing. I really, really don’t want to mark it as spam. I’ve been in their shoes. It’s hard closing a cold lead. Getting that first response. Nailing the intro call. Following up appropriately. Nailing more meetings. And maybe, just maybe, eventually negotiating a sale.
The funnel is wide and the opportunities are deep. Your hit rate will be low with cold leads. That said, if you put in a smidge of effort, your stats will go up significantly.
Getting that first response
What that startup sales rep did to me—sending multiple follow-ups back-to-back without providing value—is what not to do. They started off on almost the right foot though. They congratulated me on my new job. I’m a sucker for flattery, just like the next person. Finding that personal connection, that reason for outreach, is always a great first step.
I started sending cold LinkedIn messages when I was a startup founder. I tried all different methods, from sending mass emails detailing our product and asking for a meeting to sharing free, gated content that led into our product to personalized intros where I didn’t mention our product at all.
Want to take a guess at what worked best?
I’ll give you a hint: third try’s the charm.
That’s right. Not mentioning our product and instead personalizing the intro, creating a human connection, that’s what worked best. I still send cold messages to this day, even though I’m not selling. Why, you ask? Because I’ve made so many wonderful, random connections who were, until we met, strangers on the internet. And now they’re my friends and colleagues.
If you approach any new relationship with the mindset that it will be transactional, then it will be transactional. But what a waste of a human connection! Why not make the most of your connectivity and instead build a long-term, collegial relationship with someone? Sure, it takes more effort. Real relationships require effort. Wouldn’t you rather put in the effort and work with your friends though? I know I would.
There is a method to my madness. I use a combination of two approaches for cold outreach. The first is from Vanessa Van Edwards book, Captivate. She references Lewis Howes’ strategy, and quotes him as follows.
“‘I would try to find at least three things we shared—usually a mutual connection, a mutual interest, and a mutual organization, like a school, a league, or a sports team.’ These messages were short and to the point. Howes composed a sample for me using this method:
Hi Vanessa! My name is Lewis and I wanted to reach out because I saw you’re also friends with Nick Onken, we do work with Pencils of Promise together. I’m based in LA and saw you’re from here. Do you ever get back in town? Would love to connect.
Howes’ method is pure gold. It’s such a fantastic way to connect with someone quickly. There’s a psychological principle called the similarity-attraction effect, which states that we like people who are similar to us. It’s why random people in a bar will bond over their favorite football team squeaking a win out in a challenging game. It’s tense, and yet you’ve found “your people” to bond with so everything will be okay.
The other method, which is honestly quite similar, is from Y Combinator’s “How to Start a Startup” podcast. The YC team also shared these courses as a video. In the below class, Tyler Bosmeny, the CEO of Clever, shared his cold email strategy. You can watch the full episode below. Or if you are short on time, I excerpted the advice he gave on cold emails.
“I actually found an old email and I put it up here so you guys can see it. Feel free to copy it but it is the simplest thing in the world. You'll notice it's short, it's to the point, it's personalized, it's actionable.
‘Hey my name is Tyler and I'm the CEO of Clever. [Here’s what Clever does in a quick sentence.] I thought this might be relevant for you because of [XYZ reason that's personal to you]. Even if you're not in the market, I'd love to chat with you about this [which is true]. Do you have some time this week?’
Super simple. This will probably get read, as opposed to some of the paragraph-long diatribes about why my product is the best, and why you're crazy for not using it, all before we've even met.
All you're trying to do is get a call with somebody and actually meet them. And so we'll send out cold emails. It's very effective, but make sure you do it right. Make sure you're writing emails that are interesting to people, that aren't too salesy, that are personalized, and that are genuine.
And remember, all you're trying to do is get a conversation. Get out of that prospecting phase and into stage 2, which is conversations.”
Bosmeny said it so well that it’s worth repeating: “All you’re trying to do is get a conversation.” A first meeting isn’t about getting a sale; it’s about building a relationship. And how do you build relationships quickly and effectively? With stories.
PSA: Be a storyteller
My friend and colleague at Culture Amp recently shared this lovely fireside chat between their CEO and Esther Perel. In their conversation, Perel frequently talked about the power of storytelling. She once said something to the effect of, “people decide to make change not in the didactic format but in storytelling.” She goes on to say that “stories are bridges to connection” and, most powerfully, “you may not remember that person’s name but you will remember the story they told you.”
How many times have you left a conference or some other gathering, and you remembered all these details from a story someone told you, but you can’t remember their name or company?! It happens to me all the time. It even happened today. I was trying to remember the name of a construction and development software startup. I met their founder maybe two years ago. He was super early, just starting out. I remember his story about growing up in the CRE industry with his dad as an architect. But that was the only story he told. I would have loved to introduce him to my colleague who’s looking to partner with a startup in that space… but I can’t recall his name.
Stories are a powerful way to create long-lasting memories.
Take the memory palace technique. Have you ever heard of Joshua Foer? He’s a journalist who decided to write an article about memory competitions. The memory champions Foer met insisted that anyone could become a memory expert if only they learned the right technique. Just for kicks, Foer decided to train and compete himself. He eventually won the U.S.A. memory championship and attributed his success to the memory palace technique. Here’s how he describes it.
“The [best memory technique] lies in a discovery supposedly made by the poet Simonides of Ceos in the fifth century B.C. After a tragic banquet-hall collapse, of which he was the sole survivor, Simonides was asked to give an account of who was buried in the debris. My trainer and all the other mental athletes I met kept insisting that anyone could do what they do. It was simply a matter of learning to ‘think in more memorable ways.’ When the poet closed his eyes and reconstructed the crumbled building in his imagination, he had an extraordinary realization: he remembered where each of the guests at the ill-fated dinner had been sitting. Even though he made no conscious effort to memorize the layout of the room, it nonetheless left a durable impression. From that simple observation, Simonides reportedly invented a technique that would form the basis of what came to be known as the art of memory. He realized that if there hadn’t been guests sitting at a banquet table but, say, every great Greek dramatist seated in order of birth — or each of the words of one of his poems or every item he needed to accomplish that day — he would have remembered that instead. He reasoned that just about anything could be imprinted upon our memories, and kept in good order, simply by constructing a building in the imagination and filling it with imagery of what needed to be recalled. This imagined edifice could then be walked through at any time in the future. Such a building would later come to be called a memory palace.”
You can apply this same logic to building your relationships. If you want people to remember something in particular about you—your company, your skills, etc.—then you can make it easy for them by constructing a memory palace. Tell them a powerful, visual story. This will make it easy for them to recall the facts you sprinkled into the story.
And if you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’re not at a CRE tech startup or not in sales, think again.
Why this matters to everyone in CRE (and beyond)
Everyone will at some point in their career need to convince someone to do something. To sell them on a position or a plan or a product. I’m in fact doing this right now. I’m writing a doc that explains a topic to some work colleagues. And I’m writing this thing and thinking, “Ugh, writing a list of facts is not fun but I guess it’s what I have to do.” Then I realized… no, it’s not. I could write a story. Craft a memory palace for them.
It’s more fun for me, and it helps them remember my messaging better. Win. Win.
If I haven’t convinced you of the relevance of this topic to you, let me try again.
Founders are selling their products to new customers → more effective to visualize the story of how their customer will become a hero using their product than to list a bunch of facts about it
You’re selling real estate → it’s much easier if you pitch the potential buyer on a story of how they could build a business plan that will allow them to achieve X high multiple or IRR and imagine how that would look in an investor letter
You’re trying to convince your investment (or other part of a real estate firm) team of a new strategy → show them how it could make your group the next big thing
Or even more generic: you have an idea for a project → sell your bosses or team on the story of how it could make your group the next big thing
The better we remember something, the more we think about it. The more we think about it, the more we like it. The more we like it, the more likely we are to do something about it.
So go out there and build relationships with your cold emails and messages. And tell stories. Build memory palaces. I can’t wait to hear (and visualize) them.
Jen’s Reading Corner
I recently read an essay from a Substack author that I thoroughly enjoyed. While he’s still writing, this essay was published in 2014. Yet it’s still incredibly relevant today. Scott Alexander wrote an essay titled, “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup.” I won’t ruin it for you, but suffice it to say it was one of my favorite short reads in a very long time. For those who enjoyed it and want more, his current Substack is here.
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