Changed my mind about cold emailing after a roofer in Ohio called me out

I used to think cold emailing was just a numbers game, spam till something sticks. But then last spring I sent a batch to small construction firms in the Midwest, and one guy actually called me back. He didn't yell at me or hang up, he said 'you clearly don't know what problems I deal with, because you're pushing a CRM and I'm trying to figure out why my guys keep quitting.' That stopped me cold. I realized I was sending the same template to everyone and hoping for the best. So I sat down and asked him what his actual day-to-day looked like, and he walked me through his scheduling mess. Now I try to tailor each email to one specific pain point I can solve, even if it takes longer. Has anyone else had a prospect basically teach them how to market better?

2 comments

2 Comments

bethj442d ago

A friend of mine in Michigan ran into this same thing with a drywall contractor. He had been sending generic emails about estimating software until the guy finally told him, just like @king.aaron's landscaper story, that his real problem was keeping his truck stocked for each job. That one conversation shifted his whole approach from shouting into the void to actually listening.

king.aaron2d ago

Talking to a guy in Colorado who ran a landscaping crew taught me the same thing. Once I stopped pitching and started asking about his specific headache with winter scheduling, he actually gave me the exact problem to solve.