A little while back I wrote an email with the subject line:
“Worshipping the open rate fairy and calling it science”
The email broke apart the entire “oOoOPeN rRrRrAAAAAtEs” schtick from multiple points of view, not just from my experiences and my customers’ experiences, but in the experiences of trained computer scientists and engineers, as well as Gmail’s own particulars, the realities of Android phones mostly not even knowing if you opened an email, and the list goes on.
A big theme in the email was:
Focus on what you can control, not what you can’t.
This goes 100% against virtually all sales, marketing, and copywriting dogma — with their obsession with sales quotas, freaking out over vanity metrics like open & opt-in rates, and confusing a mere result with failure.
Enter daily email reader Jameel Paul.
Jameel is a former hardcore door-to-door “make the sale to these ice cold leads who are calling the cops on you or you don’t eat” salesman.
His reply is reprinted with his permission below.
Hit it, Jameel:
elBenbo you’re 100% right,
focusing on what you “can control” was literally beaten into me from my direct-selling days. 8 years I spent in that industry.
Eight hours a day going door-to-door, or approaching people in the street cold, selling whatever service I had at the time.
All on 100% commission.
An in a day you’d have *so many* variables:
* working outside in poor weather conditions, literally hail, rain, sleet n snow, (and having to smile at customers when you have frozen feet, fingers and you’re suit’s drenched through)
* people not answering the door to you
* the police being called out to stop and question you because you look “suspicious” – when you’re just trying to earn a living like the next man
* would-be customers failing a credit check (for the few people who were interested)
* or other would-be customers who were just leaving as you were approaching, or just getting home as you were leaving
But we got drilled like military to “focus on 3 things”
1. Improve your sales Pitch
2. Increase your Pace (speak to more people)
3. Improve your AttitudeAll within our control.
And the sales would take care of themselves. (With the right actions, done long enough)
But after 8 years of selling like this, I left with no list and nothing to export. – That’s why I like what you teach so much.
Anyway, this just a long way just to say I agree wid ya, wise ol’ elBenbo
Something I want to say about this:
I don’t know if Jameel used it or not in his sales adventures, but the secret persuasion technique in the January “Email Players” issue is something that works like gangbusters even on the kind of leads so skeptical of you they call the cops on you.
If anything, the technique thrives under such situations.
But tomorrow – 12/31/20 – is the deadline to get this issue.
After that, too late…
Here’s the URL for clickin’ while the clickin’ is still good:
Ben Settle
