“Add value at every touch” sounds like good prospecting advice, but is actually bad prospecting advice.
Don’t get me wrong, adding value is an incredibly powerful thing. But let’s get clear about what “adding value” actually means and what has to happen for value to actually be added:
You share something with a person
Person understands it
Person likes it
Person decides to actually take a new action because of it
That action leads to a positive result
No value is added unless a prospect actually implements something, and they see a positive result.
“Adding value” in the literal sense, at every prospecting touch is not realistic.
When someone says they “add value at every touch” what they usually mean is that they “attempt to add value at every touch.”
Good intentions do not always lead to practical outcomes no matter how good they sound. I’ll go through a few examples.
Cold calls
Some SDRs may interpret “add value” literally (the 6 steps above) as what they need to do during their unsolicited phone calls. [1]
A cold call usually not the best format for this.
What’s wrong with the attempt? An attempt to do this can take bandwidth and distract from the goal of the cold call (ex. getting an initial meeting set). Seconds count and the focus needs to be on doing things necessary to achieve the desired outcome of the cold call and eliminating everything else.
Initial cold emails
In an attempt to “add value” some will attach a white paper or link to some marketing content in their initial outbound email to a prospect. This can be counterproductive.
Think of this like a funnel. Look at the click through rate on one of your emails with an external link. Then consider that only a fraction of the people who click through will read the whole thing, and only a fraction of those will enjoy it. Of those, maybe some decide to respond because of it [2].
For most, the marginal increase in responses as a result of the content is probably pretty small.
On the other hand, links/attachments can hurt deliverability when you are cold emailing. Links/attachments from unknown senders is a common flag for spam filters and can cause your emails to not be seen by your prospects at all [3].
Teams that systematically add attachments to outbound emails can have absolutely abysmal response rates for this reason alone
Follow up emails
The first part of the Agoge Sequence is a series of three emails. A customized email where the SDR invests research time, and then two follow up emails to resurface that email if it gets overlooked. These follow up emails are usually one line and their sole purpose is to draw attention to your customized email that was previously ignored.
In an effort to “add value” some will include another thought or a link to content in the follow up email instead of the one simple line. This is not more effective. On top of potential deliverability problems discussed earlier, new information changes the subject and distracts from what makes the email bump work.
Action item
“Add value at every touch,” is such a positive sounding phrase that disagreeing with it just *feels* wrong. Arguing against it makes you sound like a bad guy.
That’s exactly why it’s so dangerous.
“Add value,” “share value,” “bring value,” are ideas that sound nice and are awkward to contradict. So poor strategies labeled this way can stick around for a long time.
Next time you hear these phrases, or use them yourself, make sure you clarify what is actually meant. Dig and get to the bottom of what specific strategy it is representing and evaluate it on its merits.
Have a great week and happy hunting!!
[1] And then if they want to, now the prospect is now outside of their inbox and there is more friction to replying.
[2] Don’t worry about opt-out links and calendar links in your signature. Spam filters are used to those
[3] In cold call coaching, “add value” is often used as a code for “pitch the product.” Pitching the product isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if the literal interpretation of “add value” is different than the implied meaning, it can be confusing.