I Thought My Prospecting Was Good
Then I realized every email was really about me.
There was a time when I genuinely believed I was writing great prospecting emails.
I wasn't blasting templates to thousands of people.
I was doing the work.
I'd research the company.
Read the annual report.
Look through LinkedIn.
Find something recent in the news.
I'd personalize the opening sentence, mention an acquisition or a new executive, and then spend the rest of the email explaining why we were different.
When I hit send, I felt pretty good about it.
I had done everything the sales books told me to do.
The problem was...
Almost nobody wrote back.
Not because the emails were lazy.
Because they weren't relevant.
At the time, I blamed everything except the message.
Maybe executives were just too busy.
Maybe my timing was off.
Maybe they already had another vendor.
Looking back, I think I was avoiding a much harder truth.
Every email I wrote answered a question the buyer hadn't asked yet.
The Email Was About Me
I remember sitting in an airport after a customer trip, rereading an email I'd sent earlier that morning.
It sounded professional.
Confident.
Exactly the kind of message most companies encourage their sales teams to send.
It started with our credibility.
Talked about customers we'd helped.
Listed a few differentiators.
Ended by asking for thirty minutes.
Then I read it again.
This time pretending I was the executive receiving it.
Halfway through I caught myself thinking...
"Why would I care about any of this?"
That question stayed with me for a long time.
Not because the email was poorly written.
Because it wasn't written for the person reading it.
It was written for the company sending it.
That realization quietly changed the way I thought about prospecting forever.
Somewhere Along the Way, We Started Explaining Before We Connected
Sales organizations spend a lot of time teaching sellers how to explain value.
Differentiate.
Position.
Handle objections.
Tell the company story.
All of those things matter.
The problem is...
they usually happen too early.
Buyers don't wake up wondering whether your platform has better automation.
They wake up wondering whether the problem they're already dealing with is going to become someone else's meeting later that afternoon.
That's a completely different conversation.
Once I understood that, my prospecting stopped trying to explain our company.
It started trying to understand theirs.
That shift became the foundation for what eventually turned into Messaging That Earns the Conversation, because I realized conversations aren't earned through clever copy.
They're earned when buyers feel understood before they ever reply.
I unpack that idea much more deeply here:
https://forgeforsellers.com/pages/messaging-that-earns-the-conversation
I Stopped Trying to Sound Impressive
Looking back at old emails is almost painful.
Everything sounded polished.
Sophisticated.
Strategic.
We were a leading provider.
Our platform accelerated outcomes.
Our customers achieved measurable results.
Every sentence was technically true.
None of it gave the buyer a reason to care.
Eventually I realized something uncomfortable.
I had been trying to sound impressive instead of trying to be useful.
Those aren't the same thing.
One earns admiration.
The other earns attention.
Buyers almost never reply because they're impressed.
They reply because something in the message makes them stop and think,
"That's actually happening here."
That's a very different emotional response.
And it's the only one that really matters.
Personalization Isn't What I Thought It Was
For years I believed personalization meant research.
Mention the recent acquisition.
Reference the LinkedIn post.
Congratulate them on the promotion.
Then send exactly the same email everyone else receives.
We've all done it.
I certainly did.
The funny thing is...
buyers have become incredibly good at spotting it.
Eventually I realized personalization isn't changing the opening sentence.
It's changing the entire perspective of the message.
If learning something new about a customer doesn't fundamentally change what you're going to say...
you probably didn't learn anything that matters.
That's another lesson I explore throughout Messaging That Earns the Conversation, because relevance isn't about proving you've done research.
It's about proving your thinking changed because of it.
https://forgeforsellers.com/pages/messaging-that-earns-the-conversation
The Best Prospecting Usually Feels Smaller
One of the biggest surprises in my career was discovering that better prospecting often looks less ambitious.
Smaller emails.
Fewer claims.
Less explanation.
More observation.
Instead of trying to convince someone to take thirty minutes, I'd simply share something I thought they might already be wrestling with.
Sometimes I was wrong.
Sometimes I was exactly right.
Either way, the conversation started somewhere real.
The goal stopped being to sell.
The goal became earning the next exchange.
Ironically, that's when selling became much easier.
Looking Back
Today, before I send any prospecting email, I ask myself one question.
"If I removed my company name, my product, and my logo... would this still be valuable for the person reading it?"
If the answer is no...
I start over.
Because somewhere along the way I realized something I wish I'd understood twenty years earlier.
People don't ignore outreach because it sounds like sales.
They ignore it because it sounds like the seller is the main character.
That's the entire philosophy behind Messaging That Earns the Conversation, and it's probably the single biggest change I've made to the way I prospect over the last decade.
If you'd like to explore the complete framework, you can find it here:
https://forgeforsellers.com/pages/messaging-that-earns-the-conversation
One Thought Before Your Next Email
Before you write another prospecting message...
Don't ask,
"Does this explain what we do?"
Ask,
"Would this still be interesting if I wasn't selling anything?"
Because looking back...
The best prospecting I ever wrote didn't earn meetings because it was clever.
It earned conversations because, for the first time, it stopped being about me.