Last week I received an email from a salesperson who attempted to get me interested in her web site development services by telling me that there were both major and minor problems with two of my web sites.

That may be true.

I might need to know what she knows.

But that is not the way to get a prospect enamored with you.

First, it’s too easy to just delete an email from someone you don’t know. Second, you don’t introduce yourself to someone by telling them what’s wrong with them or something they have, something they do or something they believe in.

A better approach, especially since she had an introduction, would have been to call, using the introduction as leverage. Once she had me on the phone, she could have asked specific questions about the site, getting me to tell her about issues that I may have known about.

She could have asked questions like:

“Are you happy with the way your site looks?”
“Are you happy with the way your site functions?”
“Do you ever hear that anyone has had any problems with the site?”
“Is there anything you’d like the site to do that it doesn’t do now?”
“How do you think your site compares with some of the sites you use?

For details on how to get prospect interested, read the chapter on Getting to 1st Base in Baseline Selling. For exercises that will help you apply those lessons, get the Baseline Selling Field Guide.