It’s Tuesday, 9:47 pm, and Steve’s in his office at the end of the shop floor.
On LinkedIn, he looks for a school trust’s operations director he messaged 2 weeks ago. He can’t find her profile, and she’s not in his connections list anymore.
LinkedIn never tells you when someone’s blocked you, and Steve has to find out by checking. She’s the 7th person this month.
Every Monday since August, Steve sends 40 – 50 connection requests to school business managers and operations directors at school trusts across Greater Manchester.
Everyone who accepts gets the same cold message template:
“Hi, I saw your school’s new phone policy. Great move! I make a steel cabinet that locks away 35 phones per cabinet. Can I send a quote?”
After 11 weeks of this same repetitive process, the results are:
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517 requests sent, 186 accepted, and 331 never accepted.
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32 replies along the lines of: “Not my area, sorry”, “We’re sorted, thanks”, “Please don’t message me”, and “We’re not interested, thanks”.
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156 never responded, not even with a no.
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And 7 who’ve blocked him.
517 requests and he’s sold 0 cabinets from his cold outreach.
Steve’s the Managing Director of a 14-person sheet metal and powder coating plant in Manchester.
19 years ago, he started his business with nothing more than scrap and tools he borrowed from his dad, getting odd jobs here and there.
6 months after his sputtering start, he landed a life-changing deal with a shopfitting firm that fits brackets in shops, malls and grocers.
He’s never advertised his services. Every job he’s ever gotten arrived in his inbox from referrals.
Steve always assumed if people knew his name, the work would always flow in.
In May of this year, he launched a new product: a steel wall cabinet that locks away 35 pupils’ phones per cabinet during the school day.
More schools were taking pupils’ phones at the gate and he saw an opportunity to get money in the bank.
He made 50 cabinets for £21,500 and sold 3 to a school trust after a customer introduced him to its operations director, Melissa.
Thursday morning, before Steve’s even opened his front door, the shopfitting firm rings to say they’re relocating and will be using a different firm’s services.
Their orders have paid the wages of 8 team members for the past 17 years. Their last order ships in late January next year.
If Steve can’t find a suitable replacement, he’ll need to lay off 8 team members he considers family.
Steve’s in shock on his drive to his shop. The moment he walks into his office, he desperately rings Melissa to ask if she’ll recommend him to another trust.
Melissa tells him his name came up at last week’s meeting of trust operations directors, where they compare notes on suppliers.
Someone at the meeting called Steve “the creepy phone locker man”.
Another operations director of a 6-school trust said she blocked him on LinkedIn, and her trust already bought phone cabinets from another firm.
She’s the woman whose profile Steve couldn’t find on Tuesday night.
Steve always believed that if people knew his name, the work would always flow in, and now operations directors across Greater Manchester know him as “the creepy phone locker man”.
Steve thanks Melissa for the information, hangs up and opens LinkedIn. 517 requests in 11 weeks, and he hasn’t gained anything positive from it.
Every Monday, Steve thought he was building his name, but every Monday he was really demolishing his reputation.
He told himself people are busy, but busy people answer suppliers they want to work with. Steve blames LinkedIn’s algorithm, but LinkedIn’s algorithm doesn’t make 7 prospects block him.
Every cold message Steve sends out to a prospect drives his name deeper into reputational debt, so his reputation’s debt keeps growing while his inbox stays empty.
On his own, Steve is struggling to figure out who will buy his phone cabinets – and why – before the last shopfitter order ships in late January. If he doesn’t figure it out, 8 team members he considers family lose their jobs.
Your Competitive Edge Blueprint™ starts with the foundation your attraction strategy needs, so you never need to cold message a prospect again.
What makes the right prospects come knocking for you?
Your research identifies
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who buys your product, from data analysed in your business sector,
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what your prospects have already tried… and rejected,
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the exact words your prospects use to describe a problem to a colleague over a beer at the pub,
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and what you can say that no other firm in your sector is saying that’ll move them to buy from only you.
Once you know who buys your product and why, every message you send focuses on the prospects most likely to buy, using the words your prospects use.
But Steve doesn’t do this. Steve thinks he can figure this out on his own.
The next Monday, Steve opens LinkedIn, changes a few words in his message template and sends 50 new connection requests.
By Thursday, LinkedIn demands an e-mail address before every invitation, because too many people have clicked “I don’t know this person”.
It’s now late January, and Steve hasn’t gotten anywhere since LinkedIn restricted him.
The last shopfitter order heads out the door, and Steve needs to tell 8 team members who he considers family that they’ll need to find a job somewhere else.
In February, Melissa’s trust wants more phone cabinets, but instead of going to Steve, she buys them from a different firm she’s heard good things about.
Don’t send more cold messages when your next batch doesn’t win a prospect over. Build your Competitive Edge Blueprint™ and be the firm prospects hear good things about.
