Making Cold Emails Feel Less Gross
A quick re-frame for you that’ll hopefully be helpful if you’re getting stuck in “outreach quicksand.”
I call it outreach quicksand because that’s what it feels like. You’re in quicksand and the emails you send to warm and cold contacts for interview requests are you asking for a rope - could you do me a huge favor and talk to me?
You can send one batch of emails with this mindset — maybe two. But after that you start to feel gross. Here you are asking people to take time out of their day to help you again.
We lose more founders at this stage than any other. And I don’t mean actually lose - most power through with whatever they learned from one round of conversations. But they’d be in a significantly better position if they’d run three or four or five rounds - there’s no substitute for ethnographic research.
The problem here isn’t the outreach — it’s the mindset.
You’re accustomed to think cold emails are an imposition because most people who write them aren’t thoughtful. They blast them to everyone because they can. But that’s not you.
You’re only sending emails to two types of people:
Close connections who would be more than happy to help if you’re clear on exactly what you need and you make it easier for them to help you than ignore you. Close connections are busy, just like you. A nudge, or even two nudges, won’t be seen as an imposition or you being a jerk. They’re just reminders to help someone they care about.
People you can help solve a hard problem. You’re spending hours of your time trying to figure out the best way to help this person solve a painful problem. Your ask is to get on the phone and see if they’ll tell you about that problem - how it impacts them and how it makes them feel. You’re a free therapist who won’t just listen… you’ll spend countless hours trying to help.
In the second scenario, it’s way more likely that the person you’re reaching out to is in the quicksand and you’re throwing them a rope.
To recap — it’s not dirty or gross to email your friends and ask for help with something you’re passionate about and they’d likely love to help you with. It’s not dirty to follow-up a few times to remind them. You’d happily do the same for them.
And, it’s definitely not dirty to email targeted people who you think you can help solve a real problem to get their side of the story.
And the absolute best way to feel good about these cold customer emails is to make sure you provide value in those emails: What’s a small, painful upstream problem you an help them solve in the email that’ll build trust? An article you wrote or can link to? A resource?
Think about it.