How to truly communicate with empathy.

Do you cold mail or telephone prospect? Do you talk to customers and prospects by email, in person or on the phone? No ? Well, you can close this page, this post isn't for you. If it is, read on.

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Are you still here? That's great. So you need to communicate with your prospects and customers. I'll be brief. If you're in sales and you read some of my blog posts, you'll have seen my belief that all the conversations we have with our prospects and customers should be centred on their problems.

What challenges they have, what they've done to solve them, who is impacted by these problems, etc... should be the foundation of any conversation with a prospect.

It has to be done well, in a 'rounded' way (i.e. avoiding appearing too 'in your face'). It's simply called empathy. I imagine that you know how to do it, but if not, let us know and I'll be happy to take a moment to talk about it.

In the context of prospecting, how often do we receive e-mails full of "I", "we", etc...? Being proactive and prospecting is good. It's even necessary. But being proactive and focusing the conversation on the customer's challenges, i.e. with empathy, rather than on yourself and your box, is even better.

Dale Carnegie wrote a brilliant review of a prospecting letter he received (emails didn't exist yet) and why it was completely lacking in empathy. This article is over 80 years old, but it's still oh so topical. The more things change, the less they change, as the saying goes. You are free not to read this article otherwise you can find it here.