Hamster Wheel
I received this note from a Thomson Reuters sales rep and so did another colleague who is no longer with our company. The whole thing immediately gave me pause.
I shared it with our VP & Lead Analyst, Hugh Logue who had the same concerns I did. First the letter, blinded of course. I’ll use a pseudonym to protect the writer.
Subject Line: Practical Law Complimentary Access- Anthea Stratigos
Hi @astratigos@outsellinc.com Anthea Stratigos,
My name is TRMan with Thomson Reuters. I wanted to reach out as we are handing out complimentary access for a couple of our in-house legal solutions to reduce your outside counsel spending and mitigate risk.
- Westlaw Edge — The most advanced legal research platform in the industry powered by state-of-the-art artificial intelligence.
- Practical Law — Integrates Practical Law and Westlaw. Designed with transactional attorneys in mind, delivers expert guidance, state-of-the-art standard forms with guidance, checklists, resources specific to in-house counsel, plus more.
Any interest? I’d like to schedule a quick discovery call and set up access.
Best regards,
Thank You,
TRMan
Business Development Representative
Thomson Reuters
It’s a downright dogfight right now in the land of legal information solutions meets legal services meets GenAI. Just read Hugh’s two pieces about Clio’s purchase of vLex and Harvey’s deal with LexisNexis Legal. In this kind of hardcore competitive landscape, tactics must line-up. Otherwise, its back to the land of Sales-as-a-Disservice and it’s purgatory for sales reps.
There are lessons here:
- Salutation — I don’t know why my name is in the subject line or it’s spelled the way it is after “Hi @’ It is simply weird and of course is likely machine generated designed to come from TRMan. Readers can sniff this out if they even open such an email.
- List Quality — I’m real but I’m not in their target market, either by firm or by role or by functional decision-maker. My colleague isn’t here so that’s downright wrong. In fact, if he were to get this, he’s at a direct competitor now so that’s even worse. Sharing sales tactics with competitors is never a good thing.
- Targeting SMB — If by chance this is now their way of targeting SMEs, they are doing it with a big iron solution, and as Hugh says applying big law sales tactics to SMB. It doesn’t align.
- Leading with Free — While TRMan hit meaningful benefits (reduce costs, mitigate risks) the note quickly devolves to features. Leading with free (complimentary access) feels a little yuck. The tone of the letter isn’t offensive; I have seen far worse. But complimentary? Surely not forever? For how long? And what happens after?
- Discovery Calls — A ‘discovery call’ is all about him. It’s really not about me. It’s SDR-speak and a CEO or senior exec, and especially an attorney if I was one, doesn’t trust the term. It feels fake.
TRMan is nice enough so I’m not offended. Simply said, sales reps can’t justify chasing an SMB at a price point that is free then low when the trial is over. Is it a $500 deal, a $1,000 deal? Honestly if they are going to get ANY ROI, a human best not touch anything with less than a $10,000 price point.
Hugh believes, and I agree, they need a distinct brand that targets the small-to-mid-sized market delivered entirely digitally. It must be easily purchased without a sales call. A human on the other side of a Q&A — maybe. A chatbot is preferred. (See our piece on use of Gen AI in marketing and sales in our industry.)
In this day and age, a person doing cold-outreach like this — even a so-called SDR — low-end of the totem pole — is not viable. SDRs are going out of vogue quickly, especially for low-end price points to low-end enterprises. TR isn’t aligning target market -> with product and price point -> with (any) marketing approach that I can see -> with sales channel and method.
Misalignment of these components equals no alignment and the wheels of sales progress go round and round on a hamster wheel to nowhere. On the off-chance TRMan finds a person on a list (needle in the haystack) that’s the right attorney in the right enterprise with the right need there is still no ROI. That person needs to discover them first and make a purchase — not ‘be sold.’
We see this misalignment all the time. I have had to stamp it out in my own organization. With a sales team at one point who wanted leads, leads, leads and wanted lists, lists, lists galore. I happened to mention they are targeting about 100 top companies, with three key roles, and account-based marketing and LinkedIn and the leadership team pages probably had better data. Besides many of these people have coffee with us each day via the Outsell Doorway. Sometimes in sales less is more. It’s about delivering value and solving problems.
After two days of emails from TRMan, and some exchanges with Hugh, Hugh said in one note: “ You know I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for TRMan.”
I was too. His hamster wheel is chock full of rejection and how fun is that? Our industry’s leading firms can do better.