Optimize your outbound with your prospect's personality

But instead of being addressed personally or tailored to your needs, it was just a generic pitch that could have been sent to anyone?

No name, no personal details—just a copy-paste job that lacked any real connection.

Now, let me ask you this: How often do you actually respond to those kinds of emails? I’m guessing the answer is almost never.

The Power of Personalization in Sales Outreach

There’s a good reason for that. A study by HubSpot found that 78% of consumers say they’ll only engage with offers that are personalized to their previous interactions with a brand. Another report from Epsilon reveals that personalized email messages boast a 29% higher open rate and a 41% higher click-through rate compared to non-personalized emails.

Yet, despite the clear benefits of personalization, most of the emails people receive today are still generic and impersonal. They’re often sent en masse to dozens, if not hundreds, of people at once. This lack of effort presents a significant opportunity: if you simply invest a little time in personalizing your outreach, you’ll already be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

So, how can you leverage the personality of your prospects to optimize your outbound results? Let’s dive in.

Why We Dislike Unpersonalized Emails

Before we explore how to personalize your cold outreach, let’s first understand why failing to tailor your messages can actually harm your business.

According to Salesforce's "State of the Connected Customer" report, 84% of customers say that being treated like a person rather than just a number is crucial to winning their business. This highlights how impersonal communication can damage trust and engagement.

When it comes to cold emailing, generic emails are often seen as irrelevant and impersonal. They fail to resonate with individual needs and frequently come across as spammy, leading to poor engagement and a lack of trust. Additionally, in an already crowded inbox, these emails are easily ignored, contributing to information overload.

On the flip side, research shows that personalized emails significantly boost conversion rates by increasing relevance and engagement. A report by Marketo found that personalized follow-ups can increase conversion rates by up to six times, demonstrating the power of tailored communication in driving sales.

This is why it’s so important not to make your prospects feel like they’re just another name on a list.

How to Use Prospect Personality to Optimize Your Outbound Strategy

Now that we understand the importance of personalization, let’s talk about how you can use your prospect’s personality to optimize your outreach.

The first step is to gather information about your prospect’s personality. For this, you can use tools like ZELIQ.

Leveraging ZELIQ’s Personality Analysis

ZELIQ offers a free personality analysis and strategy tool that allows you to quickly understand the “DOs” and “DON’Ts” of your prospect, including their natural traits, behaviors, motivations, communication preferences, and more.

Here’s how you can use ZELIQ’s personality analysis to tailor your outreach:

1. Go to ZELIQ: Navigate to ‘All leads’ or ‘My leads’. If you haven’t added them yet, find them on LinkedIn and add them there.

2. Unlock Personality: Once added, navigate to the right sidebar and click on ‘Unlock Personality’. Here, you’ll see a detailed overview of your prospect’s personality, including their communication and meeting styles, as well as their motivations and behaviors.

3. Tailoring Your Approach: For example, if you’re planning a cold call, go to their lead profile, click on ‘Activity’, and then ‘Generate strategy’. ZELIQ will give you insights into their current role, responsibilities, and priorities. You can then copy their personality traits—like their communication style, motivations, and selling preferences—into ChatGPT to help craft a tailored introduction, pitch, and value proposition.

You can do the same for cold emailing. Simply ask ChatGPT to generate a subject line, personalized greeting, introduction, and value proposition, all tailored to your prospect’s personality.

Conclusion

In a world where most outreach is still generic and impersonal, taking the time to tailor your messages to the individual can make a world of difference. Using tools like ZELIQ to understand your prospect’s personality allows you to create more relevant, engaging, and effective communication—whether you’re cold calling or emailing.

I hope this guide has given you valuable insights into how to optimize your outbound strategy using personality analysis. If you’re interested in learning more about creating personalized icebreakers for leads in under two minutes, be sure to check out this video!