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Comment by thyrox | Hacker News Reader

The power of follow ups (especially in sales)

One thing which held me back for a very long time was not following up with people who didn't show much interest initially.

I wasted so many good leads thinking it is impolite to follow up with people after contacting them once. My whole life changed once I understood the power of follow ups and understanding that most people are so busy that it takes at least 6 reminders before most people will take any substantial action.

The reverse is also true. People say a lot of things and most of the times you never cross the bridge or reach it. Nowadays, I rarely argue about anything and don't act on stuff until a person reminds me once or twice. This small filter can be like a miracle for saving your time and energy.

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Agreed. When I was doing sales, I would follow up with people seven times before they replied. I used to feel bad until I realized that it worked, then I just automated that part and didn't think about it further, the leads once they replied were sent to my CRM where I could then set them up on a call or some other action.

How much time do you allow passing before each recontact?

Around 3 days.

That sounds a bit too pushy for me. I would expect at least two weeks before recontacting.

That's pretty long, they'll have forgotten about you in the meantime.

This comment makes my LinkedIn make a lot more sense

Yes, I used to use some LinkedIn sales tools that had automated follow ups. Same with recruiter emails, if you think they're handcrafting each email, I have bad news for you. It's all templated, they use your first name and maybe put some effort into the intro using your specific company and experience, but generally, the rest of the intro email and the subsequent emails are all automated.

I block people on LinkedIn or report them as spam on Gmail if I get more than 3 unsolicited messages. 7 just feels borderline ridiculous.

You (and many technical people) do, but most people don't, that's why it works. Reminds me of this comment I saw a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825917#25828439

> On HN, people hate cold emails. In real life, I've found that most people will respond or ignore. Like a tiny minority will act like you killed their mother, but that's life.

> I know you know this, if you're in sales, but I, like many other engineers who read this forum was overly cautious when I first started speaking to people because I anticipated that 99/100 would be upset at having to talk to me.

> The truth was that 99/100 were willing to speak to me and listening to HN and Reddit set me back farther than I expected until I unlearned that lesson.

> So I'm saying this for the benefit of all those other engineers like me.

That's good to know, thanks for the tip

Man oh man, it really disgusts me that people are so stupid though. They just let companies blast them with popups, e-mails, text messages, etc all day when it takes so little effort to cripple the spammers and cut them off completely.

I wouldn't say they're stupid. If they find value in someone's cold outreach, they'll reply, otherwise they'll ignore it. But the point is that many engineers think any cold outreach automatically spam while most people don't. Just one more reason not to make engineer specific tools that require sales, it's an uphill battle.

I've automated the opposite: three unsolicited mails, and I automatically send the sender's entire company to spam and reply with a friendly request to stop. Three more, and I send an automated cease and desist, threatening legal action (with receipt confirmation requested). If it still continues after that, I actually involve lawyers.

Most people are only willing to do something after repeated attempts because they're polite and want you to stop. If a website asks you whether you want cookies, you only click "yes" because the alternative is more work. If you constantly pester and threaten someone long enough, you'll always get a "yes" at some point. But that's not consent, which is why it's illegal.

Even if lawyers cost money, if I'm just expensive and stressful enough to stop people like you from sending even a single unsolicited message, it's worth it. Time is the most valuable resource we humans have, you've got no right to waste other people's.

Good for you but you're such a vanishingly small part of the population that it won't stop anyone in sales and marketing from continuing to follow up on people (which, by the way, is not illegal). You effectively don't matter.

And good follow up software will also stop once a reply has been sent from the recipient, which is then forwarded to a salesperson to triage.

> which, by the way, is not illegal

As business, sending automated messages to individuals without prior authorization is spam. Pre-checked tick boxes are not consent to receive such messages, you need explicit opt-in. If you are informed that these messages are unwanted, and told to stop, and yet you continue, it becomes explicitly and knowingly illegal.

> You effectively don't matter

As long as I cost them enough to make sure they'll never even think of contacting me again, I'm happy.

Correct, if you're following CANSPAM in the US you must abide by its rules in order to remain legal, however explicit opt-in is not required. What is required is:

- No deceptive information

- Valid physical address

- Must have an easy way to unsubscribe, most often an unsubscribe link but asking the recipient to reply to stop being sent emails is also sufficient

- Promptly honor unsubscribe requests within ten days

Other countries have different laws though.

https://www.gmass.co/blog/is-cold-emailing-illegal/

> As long as I cost them enough to make sure they'll never even think of contacting me again, I'm happy.

Honestly if they're following the above rules, you won't cost them anything. And if they're not, and therefore doing it illegally, well, looks like your lawyers will have their work cut out for them.

I'm in Germany, so far stricter rules apply. And often senders aren't even complying with the CANSPAM rules. Far too often have I received an email with sad gifs attached telling me they don't want to stop emailing me.

Recruiters, Sales, shitty spam farms, it's all the same.

My hometown already banned any kind of outdoor ads with lights and heavily regulated ad size, personally I'd appreciate if we banned advertising altogether as society.

That's unfortunate in Germany, I've had people cold email me with good information, I've even gotten a few jobs from that. Similarly, I've had good clients come from cold email as well.

I'm not sure how advertising as a whole could be banned, there are many types, and it could be argued that even word of mouth (or merely even showing a brand image like logos) is a sort of advertising. Also, it would be very difficult for new entrants in an industry to start up, ironically cementing existing players in the market; Coca-Cola doesn't need more advertising since everyone knows about Coke, while a new soda brand would find it extremely hard to grow without any advertising whatsoever.

How would it cement existing players?

Many people already make purchasing decisions by looking at comprehensive tests from non-profit foundations (https://www.test.de/) or one of the public broadcasters' (https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/markt/index.html, https://www1.wdr.de/fernsehen/markt/index.html), and then do price comparisons with one of the many popular price comparison websites (https://www.idealo.de/, https://geizhals.de/, https://www.hardwareschotte.de/, https://www.preispiraten.de/).

If your product is good, it'll do well in the tests and the price comparison, and be bought.

You only need advertising if your product is actually bad and you instead want to convince people to pay for it because you want it associated with a certain image of your customers. But in that case, you're not selling a product, you're selling a status symbol, basically jewellery (e.g., Apple, the sneaker market, etc)

And the market of status symbols is harmful to society anyway, so if it gets destroyed as collateral damage of a potential ad ban, that'd be awesome.

When you say "many people," it sounds more like this your workflow for purchasing decisions, not many people's. The way you outlined is so rare that I doubt many people actually do what you describe, unless you want to redefine the word "many." There is a reason advertising exists and works, and you are not realizing that you are a rare, rare exception to that. It is akin to someone using only Gentoo and saying how many people also use it. Yes, some people might use it too, but it is so far outside the range of normality in the population that it does not matter, even if the Gentoo user thinks their bubble is many other people's too.

With "many", I'm actually talking about a majority here in Germany. Stiftung Warentest, Markt, Frontal 21 and similar media are extremely popular. Stiftung Warentest alone has a revenue of over 63 million a year. [1]

The consumer magazine NDR Markt had the highest TV ratings of any show in recent years (excluding evening news and special covid news updates), with a market reach of 13.4% in the broadcast area. [2] That's not even counting WDR Markt which has even better ratings.

> so far outside the range of normality in the population that it does not matter

That's where you're provably wrong.

That said, there are bad actors in this market too – especially around the Check24 group (annual revenue exceeding 500 million in 2021) and other actors, which are ranking products less by quality or trustworthy test reports, but instead based on who pays more for ads (see also: Google Shopping).

The EU New Deal For Consumers is actually going to influence this quite a bit. The EU plans to regulate comparison sites more strictly, as comparison sites will have a more important role in a future with more restricted, and overall less prevalent advertising. (See also [3], [4])

    ________________

[1] https://www.test.de/unternehmen/stiftung-5017075-5843365/

[2] https://www.ndr.de/der_ndr/zahlen_und_daten/NDR-Fernsehen-Di...

[3] https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Meldung/DE/Presse...

[4] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/vergleichsportale-kon...

We have organizations like Consumer Reports here too in the US, they also make a large amount of money, but that doesn't mean that most people make their purchasing decisions from such organizations. I guarantee if you did some sort of study, most would say they made a primary purchasing decision via advertising.

According to a GfK Study from April 2021, asking 1001 Germans between 18 and 74, the largest influences on purchasing decisions were:

- personal recommendations from friends (35,5%)

- independent comparison tests (30,5%)

- amazon reviews (23,2%)

- media reports (13,7%)

- corporate information, including advertising (10,0%)

Many of those can include advertising, such as Amazon placement and reviews, media reports (many PR firms exist to push your product onto media outlets), personal recommendations, and even independent comparison tests (people see an ad, and research it more thoroughly including seeing how it fares on comparison tests, and perhaps tell their friends too).

I am not saying that the tests themselves are not independent, nor that people don't use them to make purchasing decisions, but the prevalence of advertising is such that you cannot disentangle its influence from every other. Clearly, even in Germany, ads exist, and if they did not work, then the ads would not exist.

> such as Amazon […] reviews

> many PR firms exist to push your product onto media outlets

> personal recommendations

Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical. Reviews may only be the personal opinion of people who provably purchased the product. False reviews are fraud and explicitly a criminal act. Placing ads in media without explicitly marking it clearly and obviously an ad, so-called “native advertising”, is explicitly a criminal act.

> the prevalence of advertising is such that you cannot disentangle its influence from every other.

My original argument was that advertising isn't necessary. I think after this discussion it's become obvious that there are many other working and prevalent ways to discover products.

In fact, all advertising does is distort and corrupt those existing methods, trying to get me to spend more money than necessary on a worse product. Every cent spent on advertising could've been spent on improving the product instead.

> Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical.

Not really. Yes, ads must be clearly stated, but oftentimes news outlets are just looking for stories to run, which are not compensated with free product or money, and thus are not subject to such advertising laws (in the US). With regards to reviews, I don't mean that reviews are paid, rather that Amazon charges companies to be "sponsored" and if people buy those and review them, their review was at least partially influenced by buying the top sponsored product. Same with personal recommendations, not sure how you can construe it as fraud or unethicality if I see a Coke ad, buy it, and recommend it to my friends.

> Every cent spent on advertising could've been spent on improving the product instead.

It is clear that you don't work on any products that make money, or at least aren't in any of the non-technical sales or marketing roles, or are not a founder who must necessarily do both the technical and business side. I used to think the same way, that ads are bad, but if I build a product and I want people to use it, I must necessarily tell people about it in some way, Twitter posts, telling a local reporter or tech blog, cold outreach to people, all of that is advertising in some respect. If I build it, they do not come, automatically, of their own volition, they don't even know I exist! Us engineers do not exist in a vacuum, we code for the goal of businesses to make money. Such black-and-white thinking as yours is not conducive to actually making and selling a product.

I was co-founder in the past, and I run a few open source projects. My partner specializes in SEO, and my neighbor is in a leading position in an ad agency.

I understand the advertising industry perfectly well, but that's exactly why I hate it so much. All advertising does is help incumbents, because they can afford to waste money on excessive marketing budgets. So many products are sold on buzzwords, false claims and promoting a lifestyle instead of on merit.

Advertising, especially false advertising, needs to be at least heavily regulated if not banned entirely. Even the slightest exaggeration from the truth needs to be punished harshly. It's impossible to compete honestly in a market when your competitors are selling based on AI Cloud Blockchain Smart Industry 4.0 IoT buzzwords.

Sure, I hate false advertising as much as the next person, but by banning all advertising, I'd make no money from my product if I couldn't even tell people my product existed, which is the effect such bans you advocate for would have.

To get back to a prior question you asked (which I did not answer it seems) as to why banning advertising would protect incumbents, it's because people already know about them while they wouldn't know about upstarts. Again with the Coke example, a new soda brand would find it exceedingly difficult to gain a foothold if everyone simply defaults to Coke normally. Same as in software, imagine if a new search engine competing with Google came about, but since everyone already uses Google and since the new search engine could not advertise themselves (with such a ban as yours), they will likely fail, even if their product is superior.

Google did not grow through advertising, but through word-of-mouth because they were actually better than the competition. I discovered the soda brands I'm now primarily drinking (Fritz, Premium) the same way.

So much of human society works through word-of-mouth. In fact, I'd argue that the type of megacorporation that can only exist grow through advertising is in fact damaging to society in itself. Small, localised SMBs is how we should go into the future.

Small, localized SMBs were the ones most hurt by advertising changes such as between Apple and Facebook. But, let's agree to disagree, I don't think we'll change each other's minds in this conversation. Have a good day and happy new year.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/small-businesses-cou...

From a typical starting pool of 100 leads, what percentage respond positively having received (up to) seven emails?

It depends on the campaign, sometimes it's as high as 50%. However the amount that explicitly say no or to stop messaging them is less than one percent, most people just ignore them.

See, you don't think like salespeople do. It doesn't matter how much this practice harms you, the only externality that matters is how much it benefits them.

This reminds me of the parable of the widow and the unjust judge from Luke 18, where the widow perseveres in asking the judge for a judgement in her favor and the judge eventually accedes because he's so tired of seeing her.

(The point of the parable, as I understand it, is not "One Weird Social Engineering Trick That Will Always Get You What You Want!!!11" but rather that we should persevere in prayer and petitions to God because, if even the unjust judge was eventually moved, how much more likely is our heavenly Father to grant us our heart's desire because he isn't unjust like the judge. This is an example of an "a fortiori" argument, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_a_fortiori , which are fairly common in scripture.)

You were not trained well.

The principal element in sales is asking for the order. Everything, and I mean everything, follows from that. If you had been trained this way, following up would be second nature.

Some products dont fit well with a one call close and are centered around building long term relationships with your clients. This is especially true in b2b. Maybe you were trained too narrowly.

You can have your great “relationship with your clients.” You will see how illusory that is when a competitor appears with a 50% better value proposition. Oh, and SOMEONE has to ask for the order.

I am not trained at all in sales. Can you expand upon this?

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