It Pays to Personalize

Personalization will make you stand out from the rest of the herd.

From working as an Outbound Enterprise SDR for several startups within various verticals, for IBM, and as a Sales Coach at a tech sales boot camp called AlwaysHired, I can not tell you how often personalization is overlooked by so many, but done by so few.

Why?

Personalization takes a lot of time and effort which is true and very short-sighted.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a “herd” is “a large group of people that are considered together as a group and not separately.” From being a part of the herd of thousands of SDRs sending millions of e-mails, the people who separate themselves stand out through personalization. I’ll give you two examples of how personalization has helped me both in the short term, BUT also long term.

1. Prospect into a job offer

While at an A.I. company, I was prospecting into the marketing department of a live -streaming company. Prior to reaching out, I watched a 15-minute long webinar 4 times, wrote down keywords the presenter/prospect said, aligned them with the value prop for my company, and then sent out my email. I kicked myself because I sent it at the end of the day on a Friday, plus got an out-of-office reply. I thought the prospect would never reply. The first email I received on Monday morning was the prospect. He wrote that he “loved” how personalized I was and there “was no reason why” they shouldn’t have a call with me. Had a great meeting, became a great opportunity, and stayed connected with the prospect. Several months later, I was looking for a new role at a new company, saw there was a position open at the live streaming company and reached out to my prospect to see if there was an opportunity to come onboard. The prospect said, “You’d be perfect here.” Why? Because of my personalization. Short term: Great opportunity. Long Term: Joined a great company and increased my compensation by 40%.

2. Email to help other teams

While prospecting into one of the largest Hadoop companies in the world, I personalized my outreach. Got a reply within 2 emails to schedule a call. On the call, the prospect thanked me for my personalization and told me that they had shared my email to their entire SDR team and wrote: “This is how you do it.” Short term: Great Opp. Long Term: help others to succeed and became a speaker at my company’s conference.

Personalization allows you to stand out from the herd and allows you to guide the rest of the herd too. It will allow you to reach your SDR quota and also help you reach your income goals. Personalization will help you now and for years to come even from one email.

-Dale Thorn-

Dale has been an Enterprise SDR and Enterprise AE at several amazing technology companies including GoGrid, Soldsie, Conversica, Ustream (acquired by IBM), IBM, and AmpLive. Currently, he is a Sr. SDR at Zendrive (mobile analytics) and a Sales Coach/Advisor at Always Hired (tech sales bootcamp). Dale is always happy to do 1on1s and participate on panel discussions. Feel free to connect with Dale on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-thorn–95364171/