The other day, I posted on LinkedIn about why you need to be doing cold outreach.
Immediately, I received a minor flood of comments from people saying things like:
- “That’s only part of the puzzle!”
- “But you have to make sure you personalize it and (insert unnecessary steps)”
- “I delete cold outreach messages all the time, it doesn’t work”
I chuckled a little at it, as I’m working with a list of 53 leads right now and I’m sitting on 6-7 smoking hot leads that will likely become clients soon… and it was wildly simple.
I wrote a basic template, copied it, and pasted it into a handful of emails every day.
And it worked.
Just like it’s worked for the entire 16 years of my career.
There is a very simple reason why this method has worked so well for me for so long…
Cold PITCHING doesn’t work
You want clients.
You want money.
Nothing wrong with that. We’re all in the business of… well, business.
But selling yourself to decision makers as a freelancer is not the same thing as selling hot ham and rolls in a supermarket on a Sunday afternoon.
“Ham is on sale – and we’ll throw in an 8-pack of buns if you buy a pound!”
That’s a PITCH.
And it works if you’re selling ham.
It doesn’t work if you’re selling your writing skills.
Writers completely ignore this.
So they go through a bunch of “extra mile” stuff that ultimately doesn’t pay off for the amount of effort that goes into it:
- Crafting “better offers”
- Personalization
- Recording videos for each message
- Really dorky attention getters (“I hacked into your Google Calendar and see you don’t have enough appointments…”)
All of these strategies are coats of paint over the REAL problem: you’re trying to pitch in your first outreach message.
I don’t do any of that nonsense.
So why am I going to convert around 15% of my leads list into clients when I only spent about 30-45 seconds creating a copy-and-paste message?
Because I’m using cold outreach to start a conversation.
Cold OUTREACH works if you do this
By focusing on building conversations and just showing up, I’m putting myself in front of the prospect and then letting them come to me.
I don’t just fire off a message like, “HEY, I’LL BUILD YOU A FUNNEL FOR FREE AND YOU ONLY PAY ME IF IT RETURNS MORE THAN 25% OF WHAT YOU’RE CURRENT FUNNEL IS DOING”.
But this is what so many freelancers are learning.
There are a dozen reasons why a decision maker might not be interested in that offer, no matter how good it is, when you send it to them.
They ignore your email… and you’re left wondering why.
Because my cold outreach process builds conversations with leads, I have the opportunity to get in front of more of them, build relationships with more of them, and convert more of them into clients.
And I know that I can execute this FAST, with minimal effort and maximum efficiency.
Cold outreach works.
It’s ALWAYS worked.
Cold PITCHING doesn’t.
Stop pitching and start having conversations.