My friend was telling me about this wrestling match he went to recently. Really, my friend told me, because I wouldn’t be caught dead watching WWE every Monday night, nonetheless going to it when it came to my town two weeks ago. Seriously.
There’s this character named Ryback. He is large, steroid-pumped bald man who stomps out onto the platform when he makes his entrance. He looks at the floor, and you can see his shoulders begin to shake and the veins pop out on the top of his head. (They have those big screens so you can see it when you’re watching live. My friend told me.) He looks up slowly, and his cheeks are shaking, his eyes are bloodshot and he’s already pouring sweat. He explodes into:
WAKE UP!
Then he pumps his overinflated arms up and down, one at a time, while he begins the chant:
FEED. ME. MORE. FEED. ME. MORE. FEED. ME. MORE.
The crowd joins in. My friend said.
As my mind wandered during this story, as yours probably has, I couldn’t help but link this Ryback character to the databases we develop and work for our clients. We do the same thing:
WAKE UP: Through persistent-yet-not-annoying emails we gently “wake up” prospects who have been “sleeping,” or not ready to engage in active conversation. It’s a delicate yet effective way to nurture a prospect into a sales conversation.
FEED ME MORE: Records degrade as people move, leave positions, change companies, get new assignments. So we continue to look for new contacts, to refresh the database, and to find the right person for our clients to talk with.
Isn’t that funny? I found it difficult to stomach that I could identify with my friend’s experience at the WWE. It just proves that if you look hard enough, you can find a prospecting analogy anywhere.
