Lazy writing...the root cause of unproductive B2B pipeline generation.

"Easy reading is damn hard writing" -Nathaniel Hawthorne

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”  -Mark Twain

Short, sharp and engaging content meant for initiating a business relationship (I.e. prospecting) is: hard to create, time consuming and an acquired skill.

Given this, most prospecting outreach (regardless of medium: phone, email, social channels) mistakenly and persistently errs on the side of "perceived efficiency". Think OUTPUT, or volume of attempts, over quality in the vain hope that something will change without having to put in the required work.

A weak message is a weak message, regardless of how and how frequently it is distributed.

Enter, lazy writing (Mr. Pool)

Effective prospecting is 1:1 not 1:N.

You are asking for a lot of a specific person's time...not just for a "call" but for a commitment to an entire deal/project/due diligence cycle where you are rarely in their current FY operating plan (i.e. no funds). This is why this is so hard...and should be.

To be fair to those who say that prospecting is a numbers game, it absolutely IS, but you have to focus on the right numbers.

So, what are the right numbers in this numbers game? Directionally relevant, quantified financials and the number of fragile seconds that we have to work with (2-15 seconds, to be precise).

Back to Messrs. Hawthorne, Twain and Pool ;)

Moving an executive (the optimal prospecting target) to give you some of their scarce, uncommitted time and money requires a "I can't ignore this even if I want to" business reason tied to how they are measured and paid.

This requires a "reader centric" anchoring, relevant and realizable financial number based on peer proof. By design, the "effective range" of this content is limited to role, industry and operational applicability. So limited in scale, but much more effective.

Hard work, per Mr. Hawthorne.

Given the fragility and very short half-life of the interruption/intrusion moment that all prospecting is subject to, your message must be extremely short with the compelling content landing within 1-2 short sentences.

Time consuming, per Mr. Twain.

Asking any company to commit to a strategic asset (what you are selling) should be, and is, hard.

You are asking for a non-trivial allocation of capital (money, I/P/SaaS sellers ;), time, operational change, etc. And yet, persistent, low value one to many-centric content is still the rule, not the exception.

Take the time to write the short letter. Do the "damn hard" writing. Put in the hard yards, replace volume and frequency with hard-hitting financials that fit within the fragile seconds to drive engagement.

It works, and is worth the hard work.