The Reacharound

What?

That’s right, this is a tried and true method of reaching out to potential customers and creating engagement, before you try to sell them something outright.  I like to call it The Reacharound.

Think about it.  What if you were to get an email from a company offering a service you may actually be interested in, but instead of creating value for you off the bat, they’re takers.  Just looking for business.  Seth Godin talks a lot about this Permission Economy that we’re living in.  Instead of just asking people for something, we have to gain their permission to engage in a meaningful dialogue with them off the bat.  That way we instantly create trust, a sense of common purpose, and mutual respect.

Well the Reacharound is the same thing.  Instead of just asking someone for their business, come at it a different way.

I’ll take a current project I’m doing for example.  I’m looking for more customers for my main project:  PodcastMotor.  There’s two ways I can go about this.  

I can either cold email a bunch of podcasters asking for them to sign up for my service.  This would be easy on my part because it’s ultra direct, is tried and true to get good results, and would move my business along in the short term.

However, I could go about it a more constructive way.

What if instead of just asking for their business I emailed a bunch of highly successful podcasters, who are surely my ideal audience, and asked them if they would be able to join me for a quick 15 minute Skype call to talk about how podcasting increasing their reach within their niche community and is moving their business forward for a new course I’m putting together on the Business of Podcasting?  Would you be more receptive to this?  I know I would. 

I think this does two things:  one it creates a sense of trust and higher purpose with my ideal customers.  That is the most valuable asset out there.   It also gets you in an in depth dialogue with top notch customers that at some point could be PodcastMotor customers.  When they decide it’s time to outsource their audio production work who do you think they’ll call?  You know it. 

  Is it possible that I go through this process and have zero additional customers, but have had some insanely informative and constructive discussions with 15 of the top podcasters out there?  Sure.  Would that still move my business forward?  Bet your ass it would.

Wrapup

So if you’re looking to do some cold outreach to a group of prospective clients, especially in a high dollar scenario, first think about giving back to them before you ask for something in return.  You might be surprised to find that you end up way ahead in the long run.

I’ll keep you up to date with how The Reacharound is going for PodcastMotor.  I’m thinking it’s going to be epic!